Heatwave in Pakistan continues to cause problems [Update Post #8]

[hadi123]

On Monday, a city in the southern part of Pakistan soared to 122.4 degrees (50.2 Celsius). This might just be the highest temperature ever reliably measured on the planet during April.

The temperature was observed in the city of Nawabshah, which has a population of 1.1 million and is about 120 miles from the Indian Ocean. Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist at Meteo France, posted the observation on Twitter.

Kapikian’s tweet said that it was the warmest April temperature ever recorded in Pakistan and for the entire Asian continent.

Christopher Burt, an expert on global weather extremes, went a step further. In an email he said it probably was also the highest temperature “yet reliably observed on Earth in modern records.”

The competing hottest April temperature of 123.8 degrees (51.0 Celsius) set in Santa Rosa, Mexico, in April 2001, is “of dubious reliability,” Burt said.

We may never be able to say definitively that Nawabshah’s 122.4 degrees is a world April record because the World Meteorological Organization does not conduct official reviews of such monthly temperature extremes. But Randy Cerveny, who serves as rapporteur for the agency’s committee on extreme records, said that he would trust Burt’s take. “He’s pretty thorough about those things,” Cerveny said in an email.

This is the second straight month in which Nawabshah has set a new monthly temperature record for Pakistan. In late March, a heat wave pushed the temperature there to a national record of 113.9 degrees for the month. Several other countries in Asia also established March record highs during the hot spell from the 29th to the 31st.

April’s heat wave, coming just 30 days later, resulted from a sprawling heat dome centered over the northern Indian Ocean.

The Dawn newspaper described the heat around Nawabshah as “unbearable” and said heatstroke “caused dozens of people to faint.” Pakistan Today reported that the demand for electricity had exceeded generation resulting in “unannounced outages” that exacerbated the heat’s effects due to a lack of air conditioning.

The heat had also spread over India. The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported the temperature reached 107.6 in New Delhi on Monday.

A weather model analysis showed that Monday’s temperatures over southern Pakistan were up to 25 degrees warmer than normal.

A separate dome of hot air, which bubbled over central and eastern Russia over the weekend, pushed the temperature to 94.6 degrees Sunday in the village of Poltavka, near the border with Kazakhstan. Burt said it was the warmest April temperature ever measured in the Asian part of Russia.

The record-setting 122.4 degree reading in Nawabshah adds to a long list of international hot weather extremes since 2017, which includes Spain’s and Iran’s highest temperatures ever recorded last summer. In May 2017, the western town of Turbat in Pakistan hit 128.3 degrees, tying the all-time highest temperature in that country and the world-record temperature for that month, Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters reported.

As concentrations of heat-trapping gases continue to build in the atmosphere due to human activity, the expectation is for an increase in the intensity, frequency and duration of hot weather.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph..._term=.3a54ae08ac78&__twitter_impression=true

 

[MenInG]

How can anyone survive such heat?

 

[Vegitto1]

India and Pakistan have cut down a lot of trees, without proper environmental planning, in their Pursuit of development.

Now its time to face the consequences. I read a couple of years back that the sub-continent have trees which kill/repel mosquitoes. However, these have been cut in the name of development.

 

[DeadBall]

Have grown up in the 50-55 degree plus humidity of Dubai plus the 45+ temperatures of Karachi with load shedding and sometimes ups/generator not working but still can't stand it when it is 30-35 here.

 

[hadi123]

At least nine people have died at Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s annual Urs celebrations in Sindh’s Sehwan town owing to the intense heat during the past two days, according to Express News.

A severe heatwave is being witnessed in Karachi and different parts of the province.

According to Edhi center, the two who succumbed to the severe heat today belonged to Karachi and Punjab’s Jhang.

Three unclaimed bodies were buried in the local graveyard; whereas the remaining six bodies belong to Multan, Faisalabad, Vehari, Bahawalpur and Samandari, Edhi Center in-charge Mairaj Muhammad said.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1703807/1-lal-shahbaz-qalander-urs-9-people-die-continuing-heat-wave/

 

[MenInG]

KARACHI: As the continental heatwave enveloped the metropolis on Saturday, the mercury on the scale climbed by 3.5 degrees Celsius against Friday’s 38.5 degrees, touching 42 degrees Celsius.

Coupled with the heatwave, relentless power cuts and water shortage in many areas made life miserable for denizens of Karachi.

The current heat spell, according to the Meteorological department, is expected to continue for the next five to six days.

A heat alert issued by the Met department on Saturday morning said that hot to very hot weather was likely to prevail in Karachi during the next five to six days and the maximum temperature was expected to remain in the range of 40 to 43 degrees during the period. Sea breeze was likely to remain cut off and wind from the northwest was expected to prevail during this period, the alert said.

Owing to the extreme heat conditions, streets and bazaars presented a deserted look with thin traffic on the roads. People have been advised to remain indoors and avoid unnecessary exposure to the direct sun, wear loose and light-coloured clothes.

Responding to Dawn’s queries, a Met official said that the maximum temperature recorded in the city on Saturday was 42 degrees Celsius and the minimum 29.5 degrees. Humidity — the amount of moisture in the atmosphere — in the morning was 50 per cent and in the evening it was 40pc.

He said the weather in the city on Sunday was expected to remain hot and dry and the maximum temperature was expected to range from 40 to 42 degrees Celsius.

He said the weather in the rest of the province remained mostly hot and dry on Saturday and the hottest place in the province was the Thar desert town of Mithi, where the mercury touched the mark of 45.2 degrees Celsius.

He said that many towns in the province experienced hot weather and the mercury there touched, or even crossed, the mark of 40 degrees Celsius.

Some of the towns where the mercury crossed the mark of 40 degrees Celsius were: Mithi (45 degrees Celsius), Nawabshah (44.5), Badin (43), Dadu (42.5), Karachi, Larkana, Mirpurkhas, Moenjodaro, Padidan and Rohri (42), Hyderabad (41.7), Jacobabad and Sukkur (41.5) and Sakrand (41).

He said that hot/very hot and dry weather was likely to prevail all over the province on Sunday.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1408712/heatwave-persists-as-mercury-climbs-to-42c-in-karachi

 

[TM Riddle]

Average day temperature close to 50 degrees here.

 

[Abdullah719]

At least 60 dead as Pakistan's Karachi sizzles in heatwave

Islamabad, Pakistan – At least 60 people have died of heat-related illnesses in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in the last four days, rescue officials say, as temperatures soared to 44 degrees Celsius in the country's largest city.

The spike in temperatures has coincided with the month of Ramadan, with Muslims who fast in the coastal metropolis taking no food or water for almost 15 hours every day.

Most of those who have died so far during the heat wave were elderly or had existing health complications, said Faisal Edhi, chief of the Edhi Foundation rescue service, on Wednesday.

In June 2015, more than 1,200 people died of heat-related illnesses in Karachi during a similar heat wave.

The intense heat and deaths this year have sparked concerns that the situation could spiral, as it did during the 2015 heat wave, when hospital officials said that mortuaries were overflowing and public sector hospitals were overwhelmed with thousands of patients every day.

"There is no awareness among people that they must not enter the direct sunlight, and need to keep their skin moist as this is a very dry heat," Edhi told Al Jazeera by telephone.

Prolonged power outages have also plagued parts of the city, as electricity consumption has risen, further exacerbating citizens' woes.


Government disputes toll

The government disputes the death toll, saying many of the deaths were due to underlying conditions, and not heat stroke or dehydration.

"We have verified that a number of them were patients of other conditions ... some of them were genuine cases, but not all of them," said Ejaz Ahmed, an official at the Karachi commissioner's office.

Shahid Abbas, a senior official at Pakistan’s Meteorological Department, said the heat wave was expected to continue for at least another 48 hours, and had been caused by an incoming northwesterly hot weather system and a corresponding drop in the coastal city's sea breeze.

"The main reason was that the moisture was low, and dry air heats up quite quickly," he said.

Temperatures of up to 41 degrees Celsius are expected to continue until at least Friday, the Meteorological Department said.


Urban heat islands

Rescue officials are advising those who fast to avoid prolonged exposure to direct sunlight, and to keep their skin, particularly on their heads and faces, moist. Roughly 96 percent of Pakistan's 207 million population is Muslim, according to a government census, with many observing Ramadan.

"There is a religious reason to this as well, as people who are fasting are very badly affected by the heat," said Edhi.

The government says it has set up dozens of camps across the city where they are providing water and basic medication to those feeling the effects of the heat.

Experts point to the 'urban heat island' phenomenon as one reason why Karachi has experienced such intense heat waves in the recent past.

'Urban heat islands' are high population areas which typically see higher temperatures than their surrounding rural region, due to the build-up of excess heat by their inhabitants and industrial processes, and the clearing of trees and vegetation that can keep moisture in and provide shade to keep those areas cool.

Karachi, a city of roughly 18 million people, is Pakistan's largest metropolis and its economic backbone. Spread over 3,000 square kilometres near the Indus delta into the Arabian Sea, its sprawl consists of a mix of high-rise apartment buildings, vast low-income housing neighbourhoods, industrial areas and luxurious homes in its richer southern district.

"The construction of high-rises and the manner it has been done it is [mainly] at fault," says Arif Hasan, one of the city's pre-eminent architects and urban planners. "All the low income settlements, with very narrow streets, are all becoming high rises."

Where there were once open areas and single storey homes, Hasan says, the space has vanished in the narrow streets of the city's neighbourhoods, which traps hot air with nowhere to go.

"[We need to] introduce a tradition of having cross ventilation ... you look at all the old buildings, even in the older parts of town with narrow streets, they had cross ventilation because they knew that they needed it."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/kills-65-pakistan-karachi-180523080507561.html

 

[cricketworm]

Have grown up in the 50-55 degree plus humidity of Dubai plus the 45+ temperatures of Karachi with load shedding and sometimes ups/generator not working but still can't stand it when it is 30-35 here.

It's because temperature difference to acclimatize from Winter to Summer is very high.

 

[Sirris]

This is turning out to be a serious issue. While growing up in Pakistan I remember in pak studies it said the hottest temperature ever in Pakistan was 45 C recorded in Jacobabad.

Now that highest temperature ever seems to be the average summer temperature in Pak.

 

[gkb101277867]

I really have no knowledge about this topic so plz forgive me if this is a really stupid qs.

Karachi has continually been on the news due to this heatwave which has killed many people. However, the temperature in karachi has been around 40 degrees Celsius compared to Lahore which is higher at around 44 to 45 degrees Celsius. So my qs is why are there no news reports regarding the extreme heat in Lahore and why (based on lack of media) are lahoris not struggling badly?

 

[CanadianG00se]

And i was complaining about having 27c here in Toronto