Temperatures in Pakistan cross 52 degrees Celsius (125,6°F) | Hacker News Reader

Temperatures in Pakistan cross 52 degrees Celsius (125,6°F)

cnn.com

70 pointsbelter35 comments

The thermal equator passes through Sindh. The hottest temp ever recorded was 53.5C/128.3F on May 26, 2010, the previous record high was 52.8C/127F on June 12, 1919.

So sounds like this is a hot, but not uncommonly hot day there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Sindh

That doesn't follow. If the hottest temperature ever is 53.5, and the previous record was 52.8, then temperatures that cross 52 degrees don't sound "not uncommon" at all.

For comparison, the highest temperature in Denver history is 105 F (40.6 C). Denver gets 3-5 days above 100 F (37.8 C) in a typical year based on recent history. The total number of 100 degree days in Denver in the last 150 years is 105. The total count at 103 or above is 13. (source: https://www.weather.gov/bou/DenverSummerHeat).

Pakistani guy, here.

You are correct, PK habitually gets very hot (been there, can confirm).

The real problem in rolling black outs during the summer that kill A/C. At night, it would get so hot you couldn't even sleep.

I've seen some amazing old buildings there and elsewhere in that general area of the world that were able to even produce ice despite this heat. Shame that these olds technologies have been passed by for tech from more humid climates.

What is the humidity like? A dry heat is different from a sauna type heat.

Is there any discussion or experimentation on moving towards subterranean housing? Sleeping in a deep basement, basically.

Don't know about Sindh, but Babur used underground housing in Delhi around 1500 (and IIRC hated the hot weather).

Have experienced 47 degrees in Delhi, hate to think of 52.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babur

That seems like a good idea, but none of my family's houses had any such livable basements.

> sounds like this is a hot, but not uncommonly hot day there.

To clarify what common looks like, Sindh's monthly high temps for May-June average 109F-112F.

https://weatherandclimate.com/pakistan/sindh

I'm still looking for their highest temp trends.

Ya I have not been able to find monthly highs (not average) or even just median high temps.

From the article

> The highest temperature recorded in Pakistan was in 2017 when temperatures rose to 54 C (129.2 F) in the city of Turbat

Yes I saw that too. Quite an extraordinary temp by almost any US state's standard! I looked up the temp in Turbat today, only 86F, cooler than where I live in the midwest. Wild the temp range between the two places.

Starting to sound eerily like the first couple chapters of Ministry for the Future

It's not an accident. Extreme wet-bulb temperatures on the Indian subcontinent have long been atop everybody's list of the most probable large-scale climate disasters that could happen in the coming decades. KSR just fictionalized the research.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1603322

I came here to make exactly this comment. Just how long do we expect India and Pakistan to endure these temps before attempting a geoengineering solution? Before you say 'the world would not allow that' I remind you these two countries have both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

The two countries waste much of their resources patrolling their mutual border. If they reunite instead, they could at least focus on ensuring enough solar energy to run ACs for everyone. Additional solar energy can even be used to capture carbon.

What kind of geoengineering solution do you have in mind?

For a country like India or Pakistan, it'd have to be pretty affordable. I hear stratospheric sulfide injection meets that criteria but has it's own issues.

Why doesn't AccuWeather report a wet bulb temperature? https://www.accuweather.com/en/pk/moenjodaro/261126/weather-...

It appears that they instead publish a “RealFeel” temp, which is a type of heat index that accounts for humidity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AccuWeather#RealFeel_temperatu... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

sidenote: In Belgium it has been raining/pouring for 8 months straight, people are getting desperate here. Still preferable to 52 deg. Celsius though.

To pile on with another sidenote: while in Stockholm we've been having summer temperatures since early May, the whole month has been sunny with barely any rain, temps around 20-25C max, 10-12C during the coldest in the night, stuff I've only seen in June or July previously.

It's pretty insane to be getting such early summer here, we completely skipped spring.

Weather is not the climate but I think having a constant whole month of +8C to +10C deviation from the mean is scary.

The humidity matters when considering how "dangerous" temperatures are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

Long-term data: https://ourworldindata.org/temperature-anomaly

I hope we manage to mitigate this situation before some nuclear power decides that it needs new land for its people.

Fun fact - PK is a nuclear power.

Nuclear power won’t help much on that angle

You mean, "accept our refugees or we all die together" doesn't work?

It seems… unlikely?

You would have to have a government that is simultaneously actively advocating its citizens to abandon the nation while also threatening a nuclear strike on a neighboring nation and drawing the ire of the rest of the world.

Agreed, also a nuclear strike would serve no purpose to the aggressor, they would want the land to be healthy, not irradiated. Invasions are not ever going to be won through the threat of nuclear war.

I didn't think of it like that. Of course the land would be irradiated. That's wasn't the point.

Think of it like this: Developed nations caused our land to be uninhabitable, so we move to their's. If they don't accept us, we make their land uninhabitable too.

That’s just not how any government has ever thought out a problem. Nations don’t snap their fingers and everyone leaves at once. Emigration is slow, even in apocalypse heat waves.

We will see how it turns out in Ukraine.

Having spent time in Afghanistan a decade+ ago, that was a daily temp in Mazar-e-Sharif, too.

There was a tremendous wind, and I always wondered if that was a continuation of the monsoon.

At what humidity? 125F at 10% humidity is much more bearable than at 70% humidity.

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