A record heat wave is setting in over India and Pakistan. In the latter country, temperatures are observed well above normal seasonal temperatures ranging between 40 and 45 degrees. A phenomenon all the more worrying as it is early, summer has not yet started.
Spring is not yet over and the dry season is already settling in Pakistan and most of India, with infernal temperatures from April: 35, 40, even 45°C. ” The Pakistan Meteorology Department has just issued a heat wave alert, explains Ata Hussain, scientific advisor to the World Meteorological Organization. According to their forecasts, daytime temperatures should be 6 to 8 degrees above seasonal norms throughout the southern half of the country and 5 to 7 degrees in the northern part. Pressure variations in the upper atmosphere are partly responsible for this heat. We have already observed such waves in April, but it is not frequent. In recent years, this is only the second time. We rather observe this from June, whereas there we are only at the beginning of the dry season. »
Beyond the furnace suffered by the inhabitants, this early heat also worries because the monsoon will start in two months and bring with it a lot of humidity in the air. ” From July, it will be the beginning of the monsooncontinues Ata Hussain. There will then be more humidity in the air and it is not certain that the temperatures will drop enormously. If it does not rain, these two factors, humidity and heat, will be very hard for humans and all living beings to bear. »
Although it is still too early to make the link between an event and climate change, this scenario corresponds to what the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC) anticipated. In their report published in February, the scientists believe that this conjunction of heat and humidity will be more and more frequent in the future, even making some regions of the world in South Asia practically uninhabitable.