More than 100 have died in Balia and Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh in last few days. These districts have experienced heatwave conditions. IMD has given orange alert warning (40℃ to 45℃) for these as well as other districts in Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
For those
who are aware, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Climate fiction ‘The Ministry for the
Future’ opens with a stunning description of heatwave related deaths in Uttar
Pradesh. What is happening now in Deoria and Balia district has uncanny
resemblance to what author has imagined. In some sense, we have been made aware
of what awaits us, though we have decided to bury it because it is inconvenient.
Even now, these deaths are not officially attributed to heatwave.
Here is
what I think have happened. It is a hypothesis rather than a statement with
some proof.
Balia and
Deoria are districts near Ganga, a large water body. Rising temperatures have
caused greater evaporation of this water body leading to excessive humidity in
the surroundings. Perhaps there are pockets, set of villages or parts of
cities, where humidity levels have been very high coupled with high
temperatures. It is in these pockets, there are several incidences of
individuals suffering due to heatstroke. The official weather statistics is not
able to reflect what is happening in these pockets and hence deaths are not
linked to heatwave.
Another aspect
might be vulnerability linked. The combination of high humidity and high temperature
is turning lethal for a vulnerable group even though scientific threshold of fatal
wet-bulb temperature, 40℃, is not reached as such. The reaction of body to high
humidity is not like switch of the light, that it reacts only after threshold
temperature is reached. The discomfort starts much before the threshold and
even threshold, where discomfort turns fatal, can be different for different
individuals. Broad weather data and physical calculation tries to capture a
central tendency while exposed population and geography experiences a
distribution of phenomenon, all around the central tendency.
I do not
have required information to test these hypotheses. Along with providing
required relief to exposed population, government should study the location
where individual have reported suffering and also try to track more micro
climatic conditions. Even though a whole geography might not be at risk, there
might be pockets where climate change will prove fatal.
What is
happening in these two districts is warning to many of us, especially those who
cannot buy their way out of what climate change will throw in their life. Mumbai
region too witnessed tragic deaths related to heat this summer. And now,
perhaps it is staring at one of the deficient monsoons. The next year will be of
general election, likely to one with less water and more heat. Unless monsoon
saves it, sprawling urban region will have several pockets of suffering next
year. In the unprecedented construction boom, of towers, roads and transport,
where are the solutions to these sufferings?