HOTTEST TOWN
Heat in Pakistan’s Sibi town hits 50°C due to dry spell
SIBI (Pakistan)
AFTER hours toiling at construction sites in 50°C heat, Lakhmir Brahmani finds little relief from the sun other than a donkey-powered fan during the dog days of summer in one of Pakistan’s hottest cities.
Scientists have warned that swathes of South Asia may be uninhabitable due to rising temperatures by 2100 — and in the desert community of Sibi in southwest Balochistan province, where the mercury hit 52.4°C this summer, it feels like they could be right.
At night, donkeys slowly crank giant handmade fans to cool sleeping families — an indigenous remedy for the region’s excruciating weather where electricity is in short supply.
“I have no house or personal land... we have no electricity,” explained Brahmani, saying he hoped to relocate his family to cooler climates, but lacked the money to do so.
“How could I go to (provincial capital) Quetta or other areas where the cost of a truck or tractor ride one way is Rs10,000 (RM406), which I hardly earn in a whole month?”
The subcontinent — home to one-fifth of the global population — could see humid heat rise to unlivable levels by the century’s end, if little is done to put the brakes on climate change, according to a study released earlier this month.
Researchers outlined their findings in the journal of Science Advances, warning of “summer heatwaves with levels of heat and humidity that exceed what humans can survive without protection”.
About 30 per cent of the population across the region would be exposed to the scalding temperatures, up from zero per cent at present, the report added.
The densely populated, rural farming regions of the subcontinent could be hit the hardest, where workers are exposed to heat with little or no chance to retreat to air-conditioning.
“Deadly heatwaves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike regions of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, including the fertile Indus and Ganges river basins that produce much of the region’s food supply,” said the report. AFP