South Asia is on fire. Intense heatwaves, such as the country has experienced regularly since 2010, have hit India, and the thermometer is panicking: temperatures of over 47°C have been recorded in cities in the states of Uttar Pradesh (north), Madhya Pradesh (centre) and Rajasthan (northwest). In India’s capital, New Delhi, temperatures rose to 48°C, a record for April. In neighboring Pakistan, in the city of Nawabshah (southeast), the temperature was not less than 49.5°C on Sunday 1uh can.
“Heatwave episodes will be more frequent and especially hotter”
And the worst could come: The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) predicts that the phenomenon will persist. The temperature can even “rises about 2°C over most of northwestern India, before descending”. When “over a billion people will experience overheating”wrote British meteorologist Scott Duncan in twitterNational records in India (51°C in 2016) and Pakistan (53.5°C in 2010) were broken.
There have been no human casualties at the height of this heat. But this extreme heat wave is killing: in April, May and June 2015, comparable episodes caused the deaths of 2,500 people in India and 1,100 in Pakistan, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Since 2010, a heatwave has killed more than 6,500 people in India, recalls AFP.
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