How can India cope with heatwaves?

THE START of May in Delhi is a riot of colour. Red and yellow blossoms line the streets. But this year, no one is stopping to see the flowers. Almost everyone who can be is inside, parked in front of an air-conditioner or fan. For weeks India has been in the grip of a punishing heatwave. On 30th April, temperatures in the capital reached 43.5°C for the third day in a row. The heat has come unusually early, with the hottest March since records began in 1901. It is affecting a large area, including coastal areas and states at a higher elevation, which are normally cooler. In India and Pakistan, more than 1bn people are enduring excessive heat. Why is this happening, and how can the countries cope?

Heatwaves around the world have been made more common and hotter because of climate change, according to Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Oxford University. They will continue to get hotter until humans stop burning fossil fuels, Ms Otto adds. The world is on average 1.1-1.3°C warmer than in pre-industrial times, and the number of heatwave days India experiences (when the maximum temperature is 5°C or more above average) has also increased—from 413 in the decade to 1990 to 600 in the decade to 2020. Even if temperatures rise by less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, predicts that half of the global population will have been exposed to life-threatening heat and humidity. The most brutal impacts will be felt in cities, where the high density of buildings, asphalt and concrete, and the absence of vegetation creates extra-sweltering “heat islands”.