DHAKA, Bangladesh – Hundreds of millions of people in South and South-east Asia were suffering this week from a punishing heatwave that has forced schools to close, disrupted agriculture, and raised the risk of heat stroke and other health complications.
The weather across the region in April is generally hot and comes before Asia’s annual summer monsoon, which dumps rain on parched soil. But this April’s temperatures have so far been unusually high.
In Bangladesh, where schools and universities are closed this week, temperatures in some areas have soared above 42 deg C. Those numbers do not quite capture how extreme humidity makes the heat feel even worse.
“Due to increasing moisture incursion, the discomfort may increase” over the next 72 hours, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said in a notice on April 22. In Dhaka, the capital, the humidity was 73 per cent, and many areas in the country have experienced daily power outages.
The heatwave could lead to more cases of certain diseases, including cholera and diarrhoea, said Dr Be-Nazir Ahmed, a public health expert in Bangladesh and a former director of the national Directorate General of Health Services.
Dr Ahmed said people should ideally try to work earlier in the morning and later at night, when temperatures are lower. But that is easier said than done in a country where many people work outdoors.
Mr Nur-e-Alam, who pulls a rickshaw by hand in Dhaka’s Moghbazar area, said he had scaled back to five to seven hours a day, down from eight to 10, because of the heat.
His earnings have taken a hit. He expected to make 500 takas (S$6.20) to 600 takas a day this week, about half his usual wage.
“I haven’t experienced heat like this before,” Mr Alam said. “Every year gets hotter, but this year is extreme.”
The heatwave poses similar challenges in neighbouring India, where extreme temperatures have strained power grids, forced school closures, and threatened the production of wheat and other crops.
Temperatures in some areas did not dip below 42 deg C last weekend. The national meteorological department said on April 21 that it expected heatwave conditions in some states for another five days.
The heat has collided with the start of India’s six-week general election, in which nearly one billion people are eligible to vote. The election authorities are working to provide water on voting days, and some political parties are taking water and cooling devices to campaign rallies.
Extreme heat also has a political dimension in Myanmar, where the ruling military junta cited soaring temperatures last week as justification for moving Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s ousted civilian leader, from prison to an undisclosed location.
Many people in Myanmar believe that the generals are moving her for other reasons but using the heat – the capital recently hit 46 deg C – as a pretext.
Asia’s heatwave is not happening in a meteorological vacuum – 2023 was earth’s warmest by far in a century and a half. And the region is in the middle of an El Nino cycle, a climate phenomenon that tends to create warm, dry conditions in Asia.
The summer monsoon will bring relief, but it is still weeks away. In Thailand on April 22, the national forecast called for “hot to very hot weather”. It put the chances of rain in Bangkok, the capital, at zero per cent. NYTIMES
