Heatwave 2022 latest news: Yellow alert in Delhi as India and Pakistan brace for temperatures up to 45C

While the rapid rise in power demand for cooling in India has exacerbated what was already a coal shortage, the country’s minister for coal and mines has said there is “no need to panic”.

The central government is monitoring the situation on a “day-to-day [and] hourly basis,” said Pralhad Joshi.

The statement comes even as Maharashtra’s power minister told NDTV that the key thermal power plants in the state housing the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, are likely to run out of coal in less than two days.

Industrial activities in several Indian states were affected as they observed long hours of power cuts amid surging power demand during the heatwave.

India’s northwestern Rajasthan state scheduled four hours of power cuts for factories as well as rural areas around them, exposing thousands of families in the desert state to extreme temperatures without the power for cooling solutions such as fans or AC.

The western state of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh in the south also restricted industrial activity this month as air conditioning demand peaked and economic activity picked up following an end to coronavirus-related restrictions.

A rapid rise in power demand has left India scrambling for coal, the dominant fuel used in electricity generation. Coal inventories are at the lowest pre-summer levels in at least nine years and electricity demand is seen rising at the fastest pace in nearly four decades.

A train shortage is exacerbating the crisis, with India’s power secretary telling a court-ordained meeting this week that train availability was 6 per cent lower than required.

The weather department in India has announced a heatwave warning in at least five states as several parts of the country reported temperatures reaching 45C.

“Rise by about 2C in maximum temperatures very likely over most parts of Northwest India during next three days and fall by about 2C thereafter,” the warning issued, meaning the mercury could hit 47C in places.

A heatwave warning has been announced for the states of Rajasthan, Haryana, UP and Odisha, along with the national capital, New Delhi.

Parts of northern Indian may get relief from the ongoing heatwave in early May, according to a tweet by independent forecaster Mahesh Palawat.

Mr Palawat, the vice president of meteorology and climate change at SkymetWeather, shared his forecast on Twitter.
“Relief from ongoing heat wave is expected by May 4th,” he wrote.

“Premonsoon, dust storm, thunderstorm and rain is possible between May 4 and 7. Mostly during late afternoon/evening over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi & west UP.”

Climate scientists have found that heatwaves are becoming more likely and more intense due to global heating.

“There is mounting evidence that heatwaves are increasing in intensity and frequency in India and across the world due to the rise in global mean surface temperature,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

India and Pakistan are bracing for a potentially “deadly” heatwave with experts predicting the temperatures to soar up to 46-47C in India and touching 50C in Pakistan.

“Unfortunately for Indians and Pakistanis the extreme heat is not over and it will just get worse in few days,” Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who keeps track of extreme weather around the world, tweeted. “An incoming potentially deadly heatwave will see the temperatures soaring up to 48-49C in Pakistan and 46-47C in India.”

My colleague Saphora Smith reports:

A massive fire engulfed one of the capital’s mountainous rubbish dumps on Tuesday as the temperature soared past 40C.

The authorities are struggling to douse the fire at the sprawling Bhalswa site to the north of the capital — one of three mega-landfills servicing the city— creating hazardous conditions for workers who had begun the dangerous process of salvaging garbage from the fire.

Officials say that the landfill caught fire after the highly combustible methane gas generating from the decaying organic waste spontaneously ignited.

“As the temperature rises, so does the amount of methane gas generated,” explains Aarti Khosla, the director of Climate Trends, an NGO working on environmental issues.

“It is a natural process and has happened before. But because right now the temperatures are very high in Delhi, yesterday’s accident was precipitated by that.”

Read the details in this report:

As extreme heat swept across large parts of India, prime minister Narendra Modi warned the countrymen against the increased risk of fire.

“Temperatures are rising rapidly in the country, and rising much earlier than usual,” Mr Modi told heads of India’s state governments in an online conference.

More than a billion people are at risk of heat-related health effects, scientists as the temperatures in Delhi soared past 40C and are forecast to linger around 44C until Sunday, with peak summer heat still to come before cooling monsoon rains arrive in June.