The heatwave scorching India and Pakistan has been made 30 times more likely by the climate crisis, according to scientists. Since mid-March, extreme temperatures and low rainfall have caused widespread suffering, including deaths, crop losses, forest fires, and cuts to power and water supplies.
The study shows the already severe impacts of global heating on millions of people, even though the global average temperature has risen only 1.2 C above pre-industrial levels to date. The scientists believe that if it rises to 2 C, heatwaves as intense as the current one would be expected as often as every five years in India and Pakistan.
March was the hottest in India since records began 122 years ago, and Pakistan also saw record temperatures. March was extremely dry, with 71% less rain than normal in India and 62% less in Pakistan. In April the heat wave intensified and peak temperatures of around 50 C were seen in May.
The early onset of the heatwave and poor rains hit India s wheat production and a ban on wheat exports pushed global prices up by 6%, adding to global food concerns. One farmer, Hardeep Singh Uppal, from the village of Baras in Punjab, said: My wheat harvest this year was 50% less than expected. My crops have shrivelled from this heat. Some respite is expected in north-west India on Monday and Tuesday, with forecasters predicting rain.
The limits to adaptation are being breached for a large poor population of the region at the present level of global warming, said Dr Fahad Saeed, a climate scientist from Islamabad and part of the study team.
He said that it would be bad for a 1.5 C warmer world. In the absence of a strong adaptation and mitigation action, a warming beyond 1.5 C can pose an existential threat to vulnerable populations. India has implemented heat action plans in 130 cities and towns, which include early moves to prepare people and public services.
A separate study last week examined the record-breaking 2010 heatwave in India and Pakistan and found that it was 100 times more likely because of the climate crisis. Recent analyses showed devastating floods in South Africa and Europe, heatwaves in North America and the storms in South-east Africa were all supercharged by global heating.
The average maximum daily temperatures in north-west India and south-east Pakistan were the most severely affected regions of the new analysis. The scientists used weather data and computer models to compare how often heatwaves are likely to strike in today s heated climate and in a world without human-caused global warming.
The researchers found that the current long-running heat wave is still rare, even with global heating, with a 1% chance that it will happen every year. They calculated that the climate crisis has made it 30 times more likely. Without the climate crisis, it would have been extraordinarily rare, the scientists said.
Prof Krishna AchutaRao, who is at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at the IIT Delhi, said that high temperatures are common in India and Pakistan, but what made this unusual was that it started so early and lasted so long. The costs for hundreds of millions of workers were particularly high for people on the end of the week, with little relief for weeks on end. We need to be prepared for it because we know it will happen more often as temperatures rise and we need to be prepared for it. Dr Friederike Otto, a lead of the World Weather Attribution group behind the analysis, said: In countries where we have data, heatwaves are the deadliest extreme weather events. They are the type of extremes that are most strongly increasing in a warming world. As long as greenhouse gas emissions continue, events like these will become an increasingly common disaster.