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Heat Wave
Firefighters in Chile are battling forest fires that started on Sunday and have killed at least 19 people and left around 1,500 homeless as they swept through thousands of acres in the centre and south of the country, officials said. Five large wildfires were still active Monday in the South American nation, with temperatures higher than usual due to a summer heat wave, said the National Service for the Prevention of Disasters. Chilean President Gabriel Boric declared a state of catastrophe in the central Biobio and neighbouring uble regions on Sunday. The emergency designation allows greater coordination with the military to rein wildfires. Boric said on his X account on Monday morning that weather conditions are adverse, which means some of the fires could reignite. Wildfires are common in Chile during the summer due to high temperatures and dry weather. The current outbreak of fires in central and southern Chile is one of the deadliest in recent years. In 2024, massive fires ..
Tens of millions of people across the Midwest and East endured dangerously hot temperatures as a sprawling June heat wave that gripped much of the US was expected to last well into this week. Most of the northeastern quadrant of the country from Minnesota to Maine was under some type of heat advisory on Sunday. So were parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi, the National Weather Service said. Weather service offices throughout the region warned of sweltering and sometimes life-threatening conditions through Wednesday. Please plan ahead to take frequent breaks if you must be outside, stay hydrated and provide plenty of water and shade for any outdoor animals, the service office in Wakefield, Virginia, said on X. Meteorologists say a phenomenon known as a heat dome, a large area of high pressure in the upper atmosphere that traps heat and humidity, is responsible for the extreme temperatures. Meanwhile, twin 6-year-old girls were among three people killed when ...
As we observe World Health Day under the theme "My health, My right", thousands of outdoor workers across the national capital from auto-rickshaw drivers and rickshaw pullers to roadside vendors are grappling with a growing health crisis due to extreme heat and air pollution. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a yellow alert for the city, forecasting a heatwave to persist until Wednesday. Delhi's maximum temperature settled at 38.2 degrees Celsius, 3.1 degrees above the seasonal average on Sunday. The minimum temperature was 18.5 degrees Celsius, and the Air Quality Index (AQI) remained in the poor' category at 209. Highlighting the physical toll of the heatwave, auto-rickshaw driver Santosh Hazra said, "Skin gets burnt during a heatwave; loo also affects health. There's ample availability of free water in Delhi but there's a shortage of shaded areas to rest." Another auto driver, Prashant Kumar (24), complained of feeling drowsy during the hot season. "I've bee
India should prepare for a nine to 10 per cent growth in peak electricity demand this summer with the country expected to experience more heatwaves, experts have warned. Last year, the all-India peak electricity demand crossed 250 gigawatts (GW) on May 30, which was 6.3 per cent higher than projections. Climate change-induced heat stress is one of the key factors driving electricity demand. Currently, industries, households and agriculture account for 33 per cent, 28 per cent and 19 per cent of India's total electricity consumption, respectively. Household electricity demand has grown the fastest over the past decade, according to Disha Agarwal, Senior Programme Lead Renewables at the Delhi-based think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water. The share of household electricity consumption increased from 22 per cent in 2012-13 to 25 per cent in 2022-23. Much of this rise can be attributed to economic growth and the increasing need for cooling due to rising temperatures, expert
After three of Earth's hottest days ever measured, the United Nations called for a flurry of efforts to try to reduce the human toll from soaring and searing temperatures, calling it an extreme heat epidemic. If there is one thing that unites our divided world, it's that we're all increasingly feeling the heat, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday at a news conference where he highlighted that Monday was the hottest day on record, surpassing the mark set just a day earlier. Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere. Nearly half a million people a year die worldwide from heat related deaths, far more than other weather extremes such as hurricanes, and this is likely an underestimate, a new report by 10 U.N. agencies said. Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic -- wilting under increasingly deadly heat waves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world," Guterres said. "That's 122 degrees Fahrenhei
With millions of people across five continents experiencing scorching heat last month, the European Union's climate agency, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), confirmed on Monday that June was the warmest on record. It also marked the 12th consecutive month of global temperatures reaching or breaking the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold. According to C3S ERA5 data, every month since June last year has been the warmest such month on record. In January, the world completed an entire year with the mean surface air temperature exceeding the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold. June was the 12th consecutive month with monthly average temperatures above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. At the 2015 UN climate talks in Paris, world leaders committed to limiting the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. However, a permanent breach of the 1.5-degree Celsius limit specified in the Paris Agreement .