From Delhi to Chennai - You don't need a heat wave to feel the burn every summer
From Delhi to Chennai - You don't need a heat wave to feel the burn every summer
From Network Capital’s Writer-in-Residence, Priyanka
Today’s newsletter comes from Priyanka. She is Network Capital’s Write-in-Residence. You can read her writing here.
The world we live in is getting hotter. We don't need science and scientists to experience this truth. We feel the rising temperatures every summer in the sweat that we constantly wipe off our brows, in the increasing electricity bills as we struggle to sleep and finally in the abject fear we have in stepping out onto our roads on a hot afternoon.
We intuitively know that the environment around us is changing but this truth is even more jarring when numbers are attached to it.
By now, most of you would have seen that we have managed to break yet another record!
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2023 has by far been the hottest year on this planet by a significant margin and is likely the world’s warmest in the last 100,000 years, according to the European Union’s climate agency.
But atmospheric temperature is just a part of this problem. Just in 2023 -
1. Antarctic sea ice hit an extreme low
2. Glaciers in North America and the Alps saw an extreme melt season
3. Sea surface temperature hit the highest recorded temperature
4. We breached the 1.5 degrees temperature warning
5. Heatwaves arrived earlier in India than considered normal.
6. And in Chennai, increased sea surface temperatures led to record rains in the form of Cyclone Michaung.
A significant fear in regard to global warming is that it would make our planet uninhabitable. And of all the problems it could cause, my biggest fear is the unbearable heat itself and I would be surprised if it is not yours as well.
This fear led me to develop a morbid interest in understanding how heat affects human mortality.
It was by chance that I came across this study - Excess Mortality Risk Due to Heat Stress in Different Climatic Zones of India
It tries to understand the vulnerability to heat stress in India using 42 years (1979−2020) of meteorological data for three cities - Delhi, Varanasi and Chennai. This is being done by studying all-cause nontrauma mortality data or deaths caused due to any disease, complication, or hazardous exposure, which have no sign of physical trauma on the body.