 "Delhi is not alone: How climate change has added average of 26 extra days of extreme heat across world")
While Delhi may be burning up, it is far from alone.
Climate change is wreaking havoc all over the world.
New research has shown that climate change caused an average of 26 extra days of extreme heat around the world.
This comes on the heels of 2023 being declared the hottest year on record.
But what do we know about this new study? And what else did it reveal?
Let’s take a closer look:
The report was released by the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, World Weather Attribution (WWA) and the non-profit Climate Central.
The research, which examined the impact of climate change over the past 12 months, showed that nearly all of the world’s populace was impacted by extreme heat days.
It revealed that countries around the world witnessed an average of extra 26 extreme heat days.
This would likely not have occurred without climate change, the study found.
According to Brussel Times, the report marked those days from 15 May, 2023, to 15 May, 2024 whose temperatures surpassed 90 per cent of those documented during the 1991-2020 period.
They then used the Climate Shift Index (CSI) – a peer-reviewed methodology to measure the impact of climate change on daily temperatures.
When they found the CSI level was 2 or over it (meaning climate change made the heat at least twice as likely), they noted the day in question as an excess heat day.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThey then compared temperatures with counterfactual temperatures – which would have happened in a world sans human-caused climate change.
The result?
Climate change caused 26 more days of extreme heat on average.
Around 6.8 billion people, 78 per cent of world’s population, experienced around a month of extreme heat, the report also found.
According to Brussels Times, the report found that 76 extreme heatwaves occurred in 90 countries.
Every continent barring Antarctica was affected.
The most affected nations are all in Latin America – Suriname, Ecuador, Guyana, El Salvador and Panama.
Suriname registered 182 days of extreme heat compared with 24 without climate change, Ecuador saw 180 days instead of 10, Guyana witnessed 174 versus 33, El Salvador recorded 163 compared to 15, and Panama noted 149 instead of 12.
‘Lot of toll we’ve imposed on people’
Experts are aghast at the findings.
“That’s a lot of toll that we’ve imposed on people,” Andrew Pershing, the vice president for science at Climate Central, told The New York Times.
“It’s a lot of toll that we’ve imposed on nature,” Pershing, one of the scientists behind the study, added.
“(Extreme heat) is known to have killed tens of thousands of people over the last 12 months, but the real number is likely in the hundreds of thousands or even millions,” the Red Cross stated as per India Today.
Jagan Chapagain, secretary-general of the International Federation of the Red Cross, added, “Flooding and hurricanes may capture the headlines, but the impacts of extreme heat are equally deadly.”
With inputs from agencies
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