Heatwave in India breaks records, still worsening | Hacker News Reader

Heatwave in India breaks records, still worsening

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139 pointsBrajeshwar79 comments

I am from Pakistan and have been in UK for last two years and it feels very weird when people start screaming "too hot" on 25C~30C. 25C to me is good weather, hot kind of starts to feel at 29-30 but it requires just a little air from a fan or from outside to feel good.

In hot cities in peak summer, temperature often goes up to 48C and rarely to 50C even. Air Coolers https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Air_cooler.jpg are the most common (affordable) tool to bear all this heat.

On the other hand, when I am outside shivering and freezing with cold (in UK), I see people walking around very comfortably wearing t-shirts and other short dresses.

I am not sure if its just me or people coming from hot temperatures feel the same way.

So a lot of it depends on what you are used to. When it hits 45F (7C) in the fall I feel like I need a jacket. Where as 45F (7C) in the spring after being used to consistent 5F (-15C) weather I will head out in shorts and a t-shirt and it feels great. I think people can slowly get used to warmer/colder climates but it takes a long time.

Location: Northeast US

May be. I probably seek jacket on <15C~20C. But I think it also depends on the body mass, and probably this is the reason people from cold climates are often taller/healthier. With that size the the amount of heat that those bodies generate can only be sustained in an environment that cold.

This was very apparent from the dress and shoe sizes available in UK and I have seen the similar from US.

In the last few years we had sudden temperature jumps in spring and autumn. Suddenly it was 25°C (77°F) warmer or colder the next day. Feels horrible especially since when a mediocre acclimatisation sets in the temperature changed again so there is never a nice temperature and it was always too hot or too cold.

Some already predict that 2022 will be the hottest year since we started to collect data. Not looking forward to it too much.

People slowly adapt to local conditions. I knew people who moved from humid to dry climates complain about dry skin initially.

I am from Pakistan and have been in UK for last two years and it feels very weird when people start screaming "too hot" on 25C~30C

I used to be the same when I moved from the U. S. south (OMG hot) to the Pacific Northwest (Seattle), which has a climate similar to the U. K. Oh, how I'd mock the natives as they whined about the oppressive heat of the 25C day. Until about ten years into living here, then I, too, got used to the mild climate. And now I, too, complain when it hits about 27C/80F. ("Complain" is a bit strong; "damn, it's hot today" is more like it, I still like a nice 85F day).

>100F/38F was not all that uncommon in North Carolina, and it was damned hot when I lived there, but I'd still ride a motorcycle in full protective gear (yes, it was kinda miserable). When it went over 100F in Seattle last year, leaving the house was an exercise in survival, and riding a motorcycle in anything other than shorts would have likely killed me.

So give it a few more years, Pakistan native or not, you'll be as heat-intolerant as your neighbors in no time!

As a new rider I was surprised to find that when it's hot enough, going fast on a motorcycle is not cooling; you're just moving through more hot air. The only way to cool off is to ride to the mountains.

Ugh! I didn’t know that either.

But it is still worse if it is hot and you have to stop at a traffic light.

100F in North Carolina usually has a higher heat index temperature too due to humidity. I thought we'd be prepared for it coming from Southern California but it really is just a different kind of hot. And it's hot.

You're talking a lot about fans and ac systems which help you bear the heat.

In the UK such protections are installed in almost no homes, as I'm sure you've noticed. Would it still be comfortable in India if such technology was limited?

When does it start to feel cold in India and when do people begin to use their central heating systems? Are central heating systems common in the warmer regions?

Can't tell much about India other than it has be similar situation. In Pakistan though, there is a lot of electric load shedding in summer in peak summer because high requirement. Load shredding means there won't be electricity around 8 to 12 hours a day to use electric fans or coolers or other stuff.

Also in rural areas and where people are poor, we have other means. We spend the day outside in shadow using hand fan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_fan#/media/File%3ABinch... then there is Ghara to cool the water. Also for water there is Nalka in villages to get fresh cold water from earth by hand https://republic-imagekit.azureedge.net/republic-prod/storie... To sit/sleep outside in summer Charpai is used https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charpai

EDIT : Worst time in summer is when it's humid and air speed is 0 and no electricity. It feels like boiling inside and you can only shake so much hand fan to keep yourself cool.

And for the cold we have used blankets and room heaters which burn on coal or gas. Recently the electric room heaters have improved a lot and they are used as well.

Heat adaption is a real thing. I understand even if you start going to the sauna your body changes physologically.

Heatwave in India you say? Reminds me of: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-fo...

Beginning of that book was downright terrifying.

So long as the humidity is low, it won’t kill 20 million people (like the book). All about that wet bulb temperature!

But, they sure ought to consider their plans for stratospheric sulfur injection.

(I never got past the middle of the book. Did it pick up?)

Recommended podcast episode:

Tau ceti podcast

Solar Geoengineering

https://podcruncher.co/play/4GTv

I think there are really bad ideas out there. Putting sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere could remove rain from large swaths of the planet or concentrate it in other regions. There is currently no way to do it, but removing CO2 again seems vastly less invasive.

Currently people work on regulating such endeavors as it would seriously be possible that some coked up Musk would spread such aerosols into the atmosphere.

This happens every time a volcano erupts. The main motivation for banning this tech is fear that it will reduce motivation for decarbonization. It is reversible. We should be testing the hell out of this technology so we can do it right when we do it. At present, there is no chance we will decarbonize in time.

I think the podcast episode makes it very clear that it is no substitute for emitting less CO2 (and eventually removing CO2 from the atmosphere). This is merely a short-term band-aid.

And, as was already mentioned, the process of putting sulfur aerosols is the same as the natural process of volcanic eruptions.

It does not. I typically like KSR's works and appreciate the "dry" technical detail he often injects, but not with MotF. The book stands entirely on it's first chapter. That first chapter is definitely worth the read, and on it's own, a phenomenal short story. The rest is a poorly stitched together series of some of the most interesting and significant events being glossed over in favor of some flat uninteresting characters failing to effect any significant change with some fanciful yet flawed story telling (ever chatted with a photon before?) that somehow manages to make a potential near-future climate catastrophe look dull while simultaneously highlighting just how truly bad it can get. In the end it is a rather optimistic take too, so it's not as if it's some Cormac McCarthy-esque gloom that wears you down, nor am I a climate change, denier. It's a topic I'm quite passionate about and was really looking forward to seeing KSR's take. Ultimately, even with the optimistic conclusion, I was disappointed in the book (with the exception of Chapter 1, which again was stellar).

The potential for a phenomenal book is certainly there. But it feels like a first draft in need of an editor reigning him in a bit. I can absolutely recommend that people read the first chapter, and disregard the rest.

Oh, I agree with you. I read an interview in which KSR said he was going to stop writing novels, and I honestly believe that’s for the best. Half the chapters in “Ministry for the Future” would have made good short stories on their own, but there’s not much stringing them together.

Philip K Dick said “A short story is about a murder, but a novel is about a murderer.” I don’t think KSR writes well enough about people to sustain novels. Certainly not his latter work, anyway.

Heat waves are terrifying. The 2003 European heat wave killed 70,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

I remember that one. We lost power for an entire day in Southern Spain, everyone went out to buy AC units and put too much strain on the grid. I was young so I may be remembering something wrong but that's what I was told.

Looking at that page I see Jerez hit 45.1 °C (113.2 °F). That's the closest city to where we were at the time.

I jumped into the comments here to post exactly what you did. Let's hope TMftF remains fiction.

Well it turned out optimistic at the end, right?

Food prices this year are going to be a doozey. This heat wave plus Ukraine's missing wheat exports and increasing natural gas costs (used for making fertilizer) are a triple whammy. :(

When it gets hot in India, what are ways people like to cool off?

My grandma in Australia would drink hot tea when the weather was hot, because that cooled her down. I would go swim in the ocean. When I was in HK, I'd turn up the Aircon.

Are there uniquely Indian ways of cooling off in hot weather?

Wherever the weather is dry people use evaporative coolers. They cost a fraction of what an A/C would cost. People also use curtains made from a local grass called khus. These are sprinkled with water for evaporative cooling. Its unlikely to be unique to India though.

India has a large coast where evaporative cooling doesn't work. Only in central India it is an option.

Evaporative coolers work well where the climate is dry and plenty of water is available. Otherwise not so much.

We cover up when we go out never expose to the sun

Drink a lot of water to stay hydrated

Eat more carbs and less fat and protein

Drink a lot of buttermilk

> Eat more carbs and less fat and protein

Why?

Good question. I don't know. Just seems to be that way

Might be related to the fact that many carbs are a lot easier for your body to break down.

Even European cultures generally consume less fat and protein in the summer versus winter.

Hotter = less calories required to regulate body temperature so lighter foods. Plus eating heavy foods raises your body temperature because it spends more calories digesting the food itself.

As an example from the foods I grew up on (Ukrainian food), borshch in the summer is generally vegetarian and often consumed cold versus meat-laden in the winter...

I live in a temperate climate, where temperature goes up to around 35 degrees Celcius in summertime. I don't tolerate temperatures above ~28 degrees well. To my surprise, I have found that if I go for a short run in the hottest time of the day, that will seemingly kickstart my body's thermal self-regulation and I'll only experience a fraction of the heat discomfort for around ~2 days. If anyone is interested in trying this, be mindful of the dangers of heatstroke and dehydration.

I've seen a few interesting things:

Most Indians have darker skin, which helps in hot climates. Light-skinned people (caucasians, for example) suffer terribly in the heat and their skin is more prone to sunburns (although dark skin can also burn in the Sun with enough exposure).

- Drinking water from clay pots. The clay pots cool water down better than refrigerators sometimes.

- "Coolers", which are basically high-powered fans that are surrounded by mats woven from the Vetiver plant, through which water continuously circulates. These do a wonderful job of keeping the room cool and also give off a pleasing smell.

- Lemon Soda. This is sold in various formats by street cart vendors. Basically, lemonade or limeade with club soda as the base. My favorite is the 'goli soda', which is vanishing quickly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLXYNjgOwQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22RXO6x8z1Q

- Watermelons. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan/Ramzan falls in the summer, and watermelons are a favorite for breaking the fast. Everybody enjoys watermelons in this season, and it is a great coolant. There is a notion of 'heating' and 'cooling' foods and drink, and people try to consume the cooling foods in this season. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxYYn4SBd9Q

- Popsicle-like things, known by various names, but basically ice dipped in juices are very popular with children, who buy them from vendors who sell from their carts on the street. They can be found by the roadside all over the country at all times of the day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klnjihAtxGU

- Sugarcane juice: This is a huge favorite in the hot Deccan Plateau in peninsular India. The cane is pressed between rollers that squeeze juice out of the cane, which is mixed with a tiny bit of lemon juice and cooled with ice. Great antidote to the heat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLP4G-PyhU8

- Clothing: Men wear white clothes, in particular those that work outside all day in the Sun. Even if it is soiled, white clothing keeps you cooler outside. Clothing is also loose-fitting and lets air through (rural men literally drape white cloth around their waists, called dhotis, and hike them up to knee height when the weather is hot).

> The Muslim holy month of Ramadan/Ramzan falls in the summer,

A tangential nitpick. Since the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, the month of Ramadan/Ramzan maps to different months in the Gregorian calendar depending on the year. [1] It has been and will be in the winter months during some of the years.

[1]: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan#Important_Dates

> high-powered fans that are surrounded by mats woven from the Vetiver plant

For what it's worth, I haven't seen vetiver cooler mats in well over a decade. All I see are mats stuffed with wood shavings.

I have a desert cooler that runs probably > 8hrs a day. I live in an area that's relatively not humid. My family is kinda lucky that we have a lawn surrounding the house and that's full of trees, so that cools the house a bunch as well.

Sometimes we do hang a bunch of palm mats on the windows and spray it with water, for evaporat-ive cooling.

Other than this, we also have lots of juices during the summer, and have diluted buttermilk to drink!

Most of us wear clothes that are loose around the groin and areas where sweat production/accumulation occurs the most.

Curd is a must have for Indian lunches if you want to cool yourself.

Slices of onions, cucumbers, etc. also help.

Wheat is unlikely to be a problem in India. Domestic production is high as are buffers. There's enough surplus that Indian wheat is being exported. If the situation changes, the government won't hesitate in banning exports.

Edible oil through is a different story.

Why would Ukraine's missing wheat exports matter that much? Russia and Ukraine are significant exporters of wheat, but their contribution to global wheat production isn't near as impressive. There's plenty of other major exporters who could increase production to help fill the gap. Prices will probably go up in some nations, but I'm sure it will hardly be noticeable compared to everything else the global economy is going through.

And it's not like Russia is just going to stop exporting wheat. Major importers like China will probably be happy to get a better deal on it than years past thanks to sanctions reducing the demand for Russian wheat.

I'd be much more worried about Europe's dependency on Russian natural gas. There are other major natural gas exporters, but I'd expect the market to be much slower to adapt since the product is mostly transported using expensive pipelines. And other nations will probably be more hesitant to increase production significantly due to environmental concerns.

India has a huge wheat surplus that is available for export, and the next couple weeks will be crucial for a good harvest. It will be known whether the crop is good this season, soon. India could very easily step into the breach to supply wheat but the problem is that the country is not set up to move out such massive quantities of grain, i.e., terminals, ports, loading facilities etc. That's going to be the bottleneck, not actual production or existing stores of grain.

Sunflower seeds, on the other hand, are going to be a major problem. They are used to extract cooking oil, and Ukraine was a major supplier.

Supermarkets in the UK are already rationing sunflower oil due to the shortage. A lot of concern about food prices in general as a large amount of our processed food is produced with sunflower oil.

Are their any weather services that report wet-bulb temperatures?

https://thewire.in/environment/as-indias-heat-waves-get-wors...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw1838

This is what I'm also way more curious about. 40c in the desert is hot and annoying. 40c in the tropics is fatal just to exist in too long.

https://meteologix.com/in/observations/india/wet-bulb-temper...

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=32.4;78.9;3&l=humidity

As someone who's living in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, the heat is unbearable during the day time despite it being a hilly city. It feels like June even though it's April. I am hearing from those living in rural areas that the temperature is even worse there. I cannot imagine what May and June will bring. The only hope is the annual monsoon rains.

Oh good. KSR’s The Ministry for the Future[0] is playing out right on time.

[0]: https://bookwyrm.social/book/29187

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future

Wow I didn't know cli-fi existed as a new genre now.

That was my first right as well!

I should have looked before making my comment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This too reminded my of that terrifying book. It made real something (killer heatwave) that I couldn't even imagine.

And it's just the beginning of summer.

Wow… 50F is quite high! The record high temp on earth was 56F at dearth valley. Given India/Pakistan are breaking records each year, it looks like they are only decade away from vast regions becoming inhospitable. Given the population density, this could become big disaster.

Recommended reading: Neal Stephenson "Termination shock" and of course "Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson, which has already been mentioned.

surprised the ocean is that hot

Thats not a good sign. Usually hot summers with hot landmass and a cooler ocean creates a air pressure differential that drives the monsoons

we are exiting the ice age (Pleistocene Ice Age), so it's not THAT surprising, what's surprising is the pace, it's going faster than expected

I wonder if it's got anything to do with the 34 billion tons of CO2 we released into the atmosphere.

CO2 is just a small part of it. Methane plays a big role and a bunch of other emissions nobody accounts for. Microplastics in the oceans reflecting the sunlight must have a big impact too.

Faster than expected with or without human driven global warming?

what ever is influencing it, human activity, solar activity, seismic activity, siberia, many causes

There's an UN IPCC report for what you got! Whateverism doesn't cut it in 2022 I'm afraid.

downvoted? ok.. to the uneducated people:

> Like all the others, the most recent ice age brought a series of glacial advances and retreats. In fact, we are technically still in an ice age. We’re just living out our lives during an interglacial.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-colde...

Since we're talking about a deadly heat-wave, people will certainly ask what global warming has to do with this. Roughly speaking, global temperatures have increased by about 1 degree Celsius over the past century. So a simple answer is that global warming is responsible for about 1 degree of the 10-degree heat anomaly.

But it's also important to recall that the human sensitivity to excessive heat depends on humidity. Because the vast majority of the heat burden from global warming is stored in the oceans, and evaporation rates are determined by sea surface temperatures, global warming tends to increase wet-bulb temperatures just as much as dry-bulb temperatures [1]. Since heat waves tend to occur under dry (sunny) conditions, the wet-bulb temperature anomaly is probably smaller than the dry-bulb anomaly, and global warming may play a larger role, perhaps 20%.

It's also important to remember that the human sensitivity to heat stress has an extremely rapid onset. Under reasonable conditions (shade/hydration/ventilation), a Tw of 28 C is uncomfortable, but brief exposure (a few hours, while working) rarely causes health issues [2]. The risk of exertional heat injury doubles at 30 C, doubles again at 32 C, and doubles again at 34 C. Above Tw = 35 C, extended survival is not possible [1]. Historically, wet-bulb temperatures on Earth almost never exceeded 31 C [1].

So, are the people who die in this heat wave dying because of global warming? Probably some of them. Considering what we have learned about heat stress, it seems plausible that the "rebrand" of global warming to "climate change" was a mistake.

[1] S. C. Sherwood and M. Huber, An Adaptability Limit to Climate Change Due to Heat Stress, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 9552 (2010).

[2] X. P. Garzon-Villalba, A. Mbah, Y. Wu, M. Hiles, H. Moore, S. W. Schwartz, and T. E. Bernard, Exertional Heat Illness and Acute Injury Related to Ambient Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, Am. J. Ind. Med. 59, 1169 (2016).

[2 note] Wet-bulb globe temperature is an adjustment that incorporates sun exposure into heat stress calculations. However, sunlight is easily mitigated. Because humans avoid such conditions, there is not much evidence on human exposure to in-shade Tw above 32 C.

> So a simple answer is that global warming is responsible for about 1 degree of the 10-degree heat anomaly.

That is not remotely how global warming works.

It's basically just bad phrasing. Granted, obviously global warming is not responsible for a deviation of a daily temperature from the average over that year or other near-term comparison. But it's not unreasonable to simply say "it would have been about one degree cooler 150 years ago".

It is unreasonable because it is completely incorrect! Lower & wetter lows, and much much higher much wetter highs is what CO2-induced climate disruption has triggered. "It" would not have been one degree cooler, this is a completely invalid way of thinking about the predicament.

> Since we're talking about a deadly heat-wave, people will certainly ask what global warming has to do with this. Roughly speaking, global temperatures have increased by about 1 degree Celsius over the past century. So a simple answer is that global warming is responsible for about 1 degree of the 10-degree heat anomaly.

I don't think it's quite that simple; the average temperature has increased by 1°C, but that doesn't mean there can't be spikes, or even that some areas can actually become colder due to different weather patterns. The climate is a complex system with a lot of feedback loops.

>I don't think it's quite that simple; the average temperature has increased by 1°C

Yes, there are regional variations. But India sits right near the average. So this isn't a real problem for my analysis. See:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_global_warming_2...

But that only describes average temperature increases for a particular area? I'm not talking about regional variations, I mean that "an average increase of n°C" doesn't mean "it's now always n°C warmer than 100 years ago". If much of the year is only 0.5°C warmer and the occasional heat-wave several degrees warmer, then you can still end up with an average that's much lower than the top of the heat-wave spike. I believe in some areas winters are actually even cooler than before and summers warmer (don't know if that's also the case in India).

Averages are a really poor way to understand most things.

>I mean that "an average increase of n°C" doesn't mean "it's now always n°C warmer than 100 years ago". If much of the year is only 0.5°C warmer and the occasional heat-wave several degrees warmer, then you can still end up with an average that's much lower than the top of the heat-wave spike.

These ideas are statistically possible, but that doesn't mean that they're physically reasonable. A 1 C increase is proportionally an 0.3% increase in the actual temperature. You don't expect a whole lot of nonlinear effects by default. The effect I'm concerned with comes mostly from heat stored in the ocean, which is not that unstable. Now, if you want to talk about fires or hurricanes or something, sure, that's complicated.

Most of the things that would cause increased variability do not apply. Moving snow lines don't matter because it's India (and not near the mountains). Wind isn't that important because temperature gradients are small at the equator. Cloud cover is very low in India in April and it isn't high right now (we're talking about a local atmospheric high, that's not cloudy). Changes in albedo, kinda-maybe, but it's the end of the dry season so things are already as brown as they get. Changes in evaporation/precipitation, again, it's the end of the dry season in India. You could make a case for shifts in the tropopause or whatever but that's why I said "probably" and not "definitely".

Most of my post was about the fact that a +1 C contribution to a +10 C excess temperature is more important than it sounds at first. I don't feel like combing through Indian temperature records to prove a lazy ceteris paribus, but if we were in a bar I'd bet ten bucks that I'm within a factor of two.

>So a simple answer is that global warming is responsible for about 1 degree of the 10-degree heat anomaly.

Bruh...

I feel bad because he spent a lot of time building up a case for it to be ruined from it all resting on this one really shaky foundation. I feel like this probably happens often in science.

It's not that shaky. Averages are averages. A very-long-term average is not that unpredictable. People just don't like hearing that their selfishness is getting people killed, so they demand unachievable standards of evidence.

Comical disinformation with [citations] to throw you off...

"So a simple answer is that global warming is responsible for about 1 degree of the 10-degree heat anomaly."

Literally LOL

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