In Pakistan, the number of rainy days has decreased along with rising temperatures and prolonged heatwaves. The absence of green spaces in metropolitan areas is contributing to the severe effects of extreme heat.
Furthermore, our structure has little bearing on the environment or weather patterns, which causes the cities to experience an oven effect.
However, the agriculture industry is also being negatively impacted by the rising temperatures and heatwaves, which highlights the urgent need to alter the current crop pattern.
Climate change is a major challenge to Pakistan, which is experiencing the worst economic crisis in its history and needs to provide food security for its 240 million people, who are being negatively impacted by record-high inflation and declining purchasing power.
According to a recent study that was featured in Science Advances and covered by AFP, heatwaves are becoming less frequent due to climate change, exposing people to extremely high temperatures over longer periods of time.
The new study deviated from earlier research by analyzing heatwaves as separate weather patterns that travel along air currents, much like storms. Previous research had revealed that heatwaves are become longer, more frequent, and more violent as a result of climate change.
Researchers discovered that heatwaves slowed down by an average of five miles per hour (eight kilometers per day) for each decade from 1979 to 2020.
Senior author Wei Zhang of Utah State University told AFP, “If a heatwave is moving slower, that means heat can stay in a region longer, so that has effects on communities.” The remarks accurately sum up our experiences in Pakistan.
The researchers, according to AFP, classified heat waves as zones covering a million square kilometers and at least the 95th percentile of the historical maximum temperature in the area. They also split the world into three-dimensional grid cells. Then, they tracked their movement over time to calculate the speed at which the hot air was traveling.
Additionally, they employed climate models to ascertain the outcome in the absence of human-caused climate change, and they discovered that human influences predominated.
“It’s pretty clear to us that a dominant factor here to explain this trend is anthropogenic forcing, the greenhouse gas,” Zhang stated.
The study stated that diminishing upper atmospheric air circulation may contribute to the changes, which have intensified especially since 1997. Human causes are not the only factors at play.
During the final five years of the study period, the average length of heat waves also rose, rising from eight days at the beginning to twelve days.
The findings imply that huge continuous heatwaves that move more slowly and with greater length would have more catastrophic effects on social and environmental systems in the future as greenhouse gas emissions increase.
Zhang expressed concern over the disproportionate effects on underdeveloped areas.
“In particular, cities that don’t have enough green infrastructure or not many cooling centers for some folks, in particular for the disadvantaged population, will be very dangerous,” he stated.
