Soon after I arrived in the eastern megacity of Kolkata in February, temperatures began climbing. They always do when India’s short winter turns into an early spring. But then they kept rising.
After the hottest March in 122 years of record keeping, the scorching temperatures continued through April, with the nationwide high averaging more than 95 degrees Fahrenheit. During my recent stop in New Delhi, the mercury topped 110 degrees for two consecutive days, overwhelming the air conditioner in my rental apartment. The maximum temperature last month in the capital, home to more than 30 million people across the metro area, averaged more than 104 degrees. Even higher temperatures have been reported elsewhere: 111 in other regions of India, and to the west, in parts of Pakistan, above 120.
I was fortunate to have any air-conditioning at all. Most of India’s 1.4 billion people would consider themselves lucky to have a fan and the electricity to run one. A ride in a three-wheel tuk-tuk feels like having a blow-dryer directed straight at your face. The inside of a slum dweller’s windowless room, often housing an entire family, can become a lethal hotbox. Health authorities have reported hundreds of deaths across the country from heatstroke, but the actual number is likely to be far higher.
https://www.visitlewisfarms.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-movie-online-at-home-for-free/profile
https://www.putnamcountygc.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-movie-online-at-home-for-free/profile
https://www.coralrestoration.org/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-movie-online-at-home-for-free/profile
https://www.visitlewisfarms.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-full-and-watch-free/profile
https://www.putnamcountygc.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-full-and-watch-free/profile
https://www.coralrestoration.org/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-full-and-watch-free/profile
https://www.visitlewisfarms.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-online-today-at-home/profile
https://www.putnamcountygc.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-online-today-at-home/profile
https://www.coralrestoration.org/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-2022-online-today-at-home/profile
https://www.visitlewisfarms.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-online-english-yts-at-home/profile
https://www.putnamcountygc.com/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-online-english-yts-at-home/profile
https://www.coralrestoration.org/profile/doctor-strange-in-the-multiverse-of-madness-online-english-yts-at-home/profile
https://geany.org/p/ipCdw/
http://cpp.sh/5revn
https://geany.org/p/EFg87/
http://cpp.sh/8k242
https://rextester.com/FJLPR68529
https://coliru.stacked-crooked.com/a/21b23550142f45ed
https://yamcode.com/how-the-country-meets-an-escalating-demand-for-energy
https://paste2.org/6FatLe08
https://ideone.com/ruDEuh
https://pasteio.com/x1D8ut5W9mYD
https://paste.tbee-clan.de/KqwCP
https://controlc.com/26c0e8bf
https://p.teknik.io/Fp807
https://apaste.info/clo4
https://notes.io/qqFTL
https://paiza.io/projects/6U3-mL5MawiYytardgcT1w
https://ide.geeksforgeeks.org/35abada6-8cbe-4b15-932e-fdb3596c314e
http://cpp.sh/6ui6g
https://bitbin.it/iis6lLI7/
https://pastelink.net/c1ro9vlp
https://paste.rs/XeV
https://dotnetfiddle.net/tWqNc8
http://allabouturanch.com/forum/topics/how-the-country-meets-an-escalating-demand-for-energy
http://beterhbo.ning.com/forum/topics/fghrthrtha
https://caribbeanfever.com/photo/albums/how-the-country-meets-an-escalating-demand-for-energy
http://playit4ward-sanantonio.ning.com/photo/albums/gvrt-ergerg
Read: Earth’s new Gilded Era
The only saving grace, as I write now from the northern state of Punjab, is that the unseasonable spring heat has come before the monsoon rains. Although that’s led to drought conditions in some places, it has also kept humidity levels low enough for India to largely avoid a national spike in deaths from heatstroke. For the country’s health and climate experts trying to plan for global warming, the “wet bulb” temperature is the danger they fear most. This deadly combination of heat and humidity, which prevents a human body from cooling itself by sweating, is a huge looming threat for South Asia’s wet season, experts say. Although climate scientists are still puzzling out the precise details of global warming’s role in India’s current heat wave, the correlation is clear enough: Spells of blistering heat such as this are becoming a regular feature of South Asia’s weather, rather than a once-in-a-decade-or-more crisis.
The heat wave has been severe enough to make international headlines, but it is far from the only impact of climate change I’ve witnessed in the first half of my six-month journey through the country to research and report on climate change and the energy transition India is undertaking in an attempt to mitigate it. India is at the sharp end of this predicament. A recent report by Standard & Poor’s concluded that South Asia’s economies are the world’s most vulnerable—10 times more exposed to global-warming threats over the coming decades, the consultants estimated, than the least vulnerable countries, mostly in Europe.
During a visit to the sprawling Sundarbans mangrove swamp, part of the world’s largest tidal estuary, where several great rivers meet the Bay of Bengal, I saw for myself how rising sea levels and more frequent and intense cyclones are helping destroy what is not only a complex and sensitive ecosystem but also a major carbon sink. One island in the estuary, Ghoramara—pounded by four major cyclones from 2019 to 2021—has lost about half its landmass and more than half its population in recent decades. A tropical storm last year submerged the entire island under several feet of churning water. Thousands of residents were forced to take refuge in a school shelter. Though inches above the floodwaters, they escaped with their lives but lost practically everything else, including personal effects and the school’s textbooks.
Nearly a year on from the disaster, I met Ajiman Bibi, a 60-year-old mother of five who was born on the island. As we talked, she spread out grain to dry on a blanket in front of her makeshift shelter. “If the government didn’t give this to us, we would have nothing,” she told me.