Humans
“boil in their own skins" at 48 degrees Celsius – 500 dead in
India
India
heat wave 2015 with 48C in Telangana's Khammam + 6C above normal
Hindustan Times
Humans
“boil in their own skin” at 48 degrees Celsius, the maximum
temperature recorded at Khammam in Telangana which has become the
focal point of a blistering heat wave sweeping through swathes of
India on Sunday, killing nearly 500 people.
Allahabad
was the second hottest at 47.7°C, six degrees above normal;
Nandigama in Andhra Pradesh was a notch under as it sizzled at 47°C
while Odisha’s Angul district tipped the scales at 46.7°C.
In
comparison, the national capital felt cooler at 43.5°C on Sunday.
The
Centre for Holistic Development, an NGO in Delhi, said the searing
heat had claimed the lives of 186 people till Saturday, 80% of them
homeless. Authorities in the Capital haven’t released any official
death figure, though.
Officials
in the twin states of Telangana and Andhra reported over 400 deaths
from sunstrokes and heat-linked ailments. “We have recorded 246
deaths from Wednesday till Sunday. Prakasam and Visakhapatnam
districts are the worst affected with 57 and 53 deaths respectively,”
said Dhanunjaya Reddy, director, Andhra disaster management
department.
The
Telangana government has put the toll at 188 — from April 15 till
Sunday — but most of the deaths were reported over the past few
days because of unusually high temperatures.
Andhra
chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu has advised people to take
remedial measures when out in the sun. His government announced Rs 1
lakh to the families of heat wave victims.
“The
conditions continuing since Wednesday is the result of a
northwesterly dry wind blowing from Rajasthan and Gujarat and a
surface trough running from Odisha to Tamil Nadu along the coast of
Andhra. Cloudless skies allowing penetration of the sun rays which
are absorbed by the land, adding to the heat,” said YK Reddy,
director in-charge, meteorological centre, Hyderabad.
Many
parts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Uttar
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka are also reeling under the summer
scorcher. In Rajasthan, the mercury touched 46.5°C in Jaisalmer and
Kota was close behind at 45.4°C.
In
West Bengal, oppressive humidity couple with the heat killed a
factory worker. Sheikh Rustam, 45, was working in an open area inside
a steel factory in Burdwan when he complained of exhaustion and died
at a nearby hospital.
In
Odisha, authorities have received reports of 24 deaths as the mercury
crossed the 45-degree mark at six places in the western districts.
“Similar conditions will prevail across Odisha at least for the
next five days,” warned SC Sahu, director of the weather office’s
Bhubaneswar centre.
The
sudden jump in day temperature was witnessed in all major cities in
Uttar Pradesh and weather office said the mercury would continue to
rise.
Medical
experts said long exposure to extreme heat raises human body
temperature to such levels that protein cells start to “boil like
egg whites”, a case of internal combustion that eventually shuts
down the brain.
Hospitals
have been flooded with cases of heatstroke in Gurgaon and Delhi.
“Prolonged sun exposure dehydrates the body and its ability to
control heat. So, we advise people to be extra cautious in the summer
months,” said Satish Koul, general physician at Columbia Asia
Hospital, Gurgaon.
Tummy
upsets, headache, fever, rashes and skin allergies from sunburn are
other less severe symptoms.
“Drink
plenty of water, avoid the sun and never go out on an empty stomach,”
reads the general advisory.
24
May, 2015
......Experts
have long warned about heat waves fueled by global warming, i.e.
recent study for heat waves in America
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-heat-waves-in-store-for-more-americans/
A
2015 study published in the science journal Nature, reported: 18% of
the moderate daily precipitation extremes over land are attributable
to the observed temperature increase since pre-industrial times,
which in turn primarily results from human influence. For 2 °C of
warming the fraction of precipitation extremes attributable to human
influence rises to about 40%. Likewise, today about 75% of the
moderate daily hot extremes over land are attributable to warming. It
is the most rare and extreme events for which the largest fraction is
anthropogenic, and that contribution increases nonlinearly with
further warming.
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