Unprecedented warm in India, Pakistan also records record temperatures
It is ‘the worst heat wave in 122 years’, according to various Indian media. Temperatures soared above 50 degrees Celsius in some regions of India this weekend. Large parts of northern and central India are experiencing an official heat wave. Even at night it remains warm, often the mercury does not drop below 30 degrees for 24 hours. ‘Before global warming, such temperatures in India occurred once every fifty years. Now every four years,” said Mariam Zachariah, a weather expert at Imperial College London. Several Indian states have closed the schools because of the heat, and the power regularly goes out. It is also extremely hot in neighboring Pakistan. There, the National Meteorological Institute warns of flooding from melting glaciers in the Himalayas. “For the first time without spring, we went straight from winter to summer,” said the Pakistani climate minister. In early June, the monsoon rains will bring some relief.
Heat wave setback for Indian grain production
In March, temperature records were also broken in India and Pakistan, and that could have major consequences for the Indian grain harvest. India is the world’s second largest producer of wheat, but exports relatively little grain. At the beginning of April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in conversation with US President Biden that ‘India can feed the world’. It now appears that the yield this year could be quite disappointing. The state of Punjab, the largest producer in India, already records 20 percent less wheat delivered than at this time last year. During the previous major heat wave, in 2015, the wheat yield per hectare also decreased significantly. This decreased from more than 3,100 kilos to 2,750 kilos per hectare.
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