25 Apr 2023 | Press releases

Worst April heatwave in Asian history: Scientists urge action to avert catastrophic impacts across HKH

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With Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar and Pakistan all hit by crippling heat as temperature records were broken across Asia this month, scientists at ICIMOD are urging global governments and businesses to make faster emissions reductions and development agencies to invest greater climate finance in efforts to accelerate adaptation for the region.

Temperatures on Monday (17 April) reached 41 degrees centigrade in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 45 degrees in Prayagraj, in India, and 44 in Kalewa, Myanmar. In China, Changsha and Fuzhou set the earliest local records for the commencement of summer, and several cities in Zhejiang Province broke their record for the highest daily temperature in April. On April 23 nine cities in Pakistan recorded temperatures of 40 and above.

The heat has resulted in deaths, schools closing and people being unable to work – compounding existing vulnerabilities, especially poverty and hunger, across the region.

“Human-induced climate change is the major cause of the growing number and ferocity of heat-waves we’re seeing across Asia. These signal to the fact that the climate emergency is here for this region,” says Deepshikha Sharma, a Climate and Environment Specialist at ICIMOD.

Abid Hussain, Senior Economist & Food Systems Specialist at ICIMOD says: “All climate models show that these spikes in heat are going to increase in frequency and intensity across South Asia. Such heat-waves will impact 2 billion people either directly, in terms of heat impacts on health and work, or indirectly in terms of glacier melt, floods, water variability, erratic rainfall and landslides.”

The heatwaves come as the United Nations State of the World Climate report shows Antarctic sea ice falling to its lowest extent on record and the melting of glaciers in the European Alps as “literally off the charts.”

The Hindu Kush Himalaya, which holds the third largest body of frozen water in the world, is warming at double the global average. Higher temperatures mean that glaciers melt faster and the resulting water flowing into rivers is less predictable. As temperatures continue to rise and glaciers get smaller, this leads to water scarcity and food insecurity in the region as well as increasing the likelihood of hazards such as flash floods. “Because of inadequate institutional and community capacity, most of these hazards are likely to turn into disasters,” says Hussain.

“In the most optimistic scenario, limiting global warming to 1.5 C, the region stands to lose one third of its glaciers by 2100 – creating huge risk to mountain communities, ecosystems and nature and the quarter of humanity downstream,” says Sharma. The rate of ice mass loss in the Hindu Kush Himalayas has consistently accelerated over the past six decades and glaciers even above 6,000 metres above sea level are thinning.

“Changes are now happening far faster than we feared and 1.5 degrees of warning is simply too hot,” says Sharma. “It is urgent that we make rapid and drastic progress in emissions reductions and scale adaptation finance, and for a much greater impact in adaptation and disaster risk reduction measures to protect the people and ecosystems, whose vulnerabilities are increasing by the day through no fault of their own.”

ICIMOD works with NASA, USAID and partners to monitor and predict regional droughts and extreme weather events through its SERVIR-HKH initiative. It shares this Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook data with public bodies in our eight regional member countries.