Climate Change Induced Heat Wave Causes Riots in India

As the coun­try tries to keep cool, the pow­er grid is fail­ing. Riot­ing pro­test­ers in the north of the coun­try set fire to elec­tric­i­ty sub­sta­tions last week­end and held pow­er work­ers hostage, accus­ing the gov­ern­ment of dis­trib­ut­ing scarce pow­er resources based on polit­i­cal pref­er­ence.

From Al Jazeera:

Res­i­dents had been par­tic­u­lar­ly angry about the pow­er cuts after receiv­ing reli­able sup­plies through the Indi­an elec­tions, which end­ed May 16. Since then, only some regions have been guar­an­teed unbro­ken pow­er sup­plies, while oth­ers have received lit­tle to none.

The High Court in the city of Alla­habad is now hear­ing a peti­tion alleg­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion in pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion, and has asked the gov­ern­ment to explain why some regions appeared to be receiv­ing pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.

Those regions include the city of Varanasi, the par­lia­men­tary con­stituen­cy of new Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, as well as con­stituen­cies held by Yadav and oth­er top offi­cials in Uttar Pradesh’s rul­ing par­ty.

As Slate’s Joshua Keat­ing report­ed recent­ly, a study this year by Lak­sh­mi Iyer of the Har­vard Busi­ness School and Petia Topalo­va of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund found a con­nec­tion between extreme weath­er (par­tic­u­lar­ly lack of rain­fall) and increased crime in India.

Mean­while, the heat con­tin­ues. On Wednes­day, New Del­hi enters day 10 of a blis­ter­ing heat wave that’s bro­ken at least one long-stand­ing record, with part of the city peak­ing at 118 degrees Fahren­heit (47.8 degrees Cel­sius) on Sun­day. Dur­ing that stretch, the aver­age high tem­per­a­ture at the air­port in New Del­hi has been 109.9  Fahren­heit (43.2 Cel­sius), with the aver­age low an aston­ish­ing 84  Fahren­heit (28.9 Cel­sius). Days upon days with night­time low tem­per­a­tures above 80  Fahren­heit can be dead­ly, espe­cial­ly for those with­out a way to keep cool.

If there’s any con­so­la­tion, at least that’s a dry heat. The dew­point—the amount of mois­ture in the air—has been low all week across north­ern India, with dry air help­ing to boost the effec­tive­ness of built-in human air con­di­tion­ing (evap­o­ra­tion of sweat) and mak­ing the tem­per­a­ture feel some­what cool­er in the shade.

Areas far­ther south, near where the mon­soon was advanc­ing, were even more unbear­able. Just after mid­night Wednes­day local time, the heat index was still 110 Fahren­heit (43.3 Cel­sius) in Mum­bai. Yep, 110 degrees. At near­ly 1 in the morn­ing. I sim­ply can’t fath­om exis­tence in those kinds of con­di­tions. Hin­du priests thereper­formed spe­cial prayers for rain to relieve the swel­ter­ing coun­try of its mis­ery.

The good news: The end of this scorcher is in sight as the mon­soon con­tin­ues to advance north­ward. The bad news: In some of the hard­est-hit places, like Del­hi, that end is still a week away. High tem­per­a­tures there are expect­ed to stay above nor­mal until next Tues­day.

A devel­op­ing trop­i­cal cyclone is help­ing to surge mon­soon mois­ture north­ward along India’s West Coast this week, though it’s still going to be quite some time before the cool­ing mon­soon breezes break this heat wave for good. India’s mon­soon was five days late and is expect­ed to bring below nor­mal rain­fall this sea­son, in part because of a build­ing El Niño.

Since the fore­cast of a weak mon­soon, India’s gov­ern­ment has ini­ti­at­ed a con­tin­gency plan designed to relieve pres­sure on its over­taxed pow­er grid, report­ed the Times of India on Tues­day. Two years ago, India suf­fered the worst black­out in world his­to­ry, putting some 600 mil­lion res­i­dents in the dark. Much of India’s elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion comes via hydro­elec­tric pow­er. The mon­soon sea­son in 2012 was also below aver­age, and demand for elec­tric­i­ty is soar­ing as a bur­geon­ing mid­dle class buys more and more air con­di­tion­ers.

As the New York Times’ Elis­a­beth Rosen­thal wrote at that time, “We can’t live with air-con­di­tion­ing, but we can’t live with­out it.” In a more tem­per­ate cli­mate, Amer­i­cans use more elec­tric­i­ty on air con­di­tion­ing than the rest of the world com­bined. Rapid­ly expand­ing use of air con­di­tion­ing in trop­i­cal coun­tries will fur­ther boost glob­al warm­ing through the release of heat trap­ping gas­es. It’s a Catch-22.

India, for one, is warm­ing to air con­di­tion­ing. In 2007, only 2 per­cent of India had air con­di­tion­ing, but that num­ber is rapid­ly increas­ing. The hot weath­er of the past few weeks has boost­ed sales of air con­di­tion­ers by 15 to 20 per­cent com­pared with last year.

This month’s oppres­sive heat wave already bears the fin­ger­print of glob­al warm­ing. Over the last 100 years, India’s aver­age tem­per­a­ture has warmed by about half a degree Cel­sius (PDF), and mon­soons are get­ting more extreme. The warmest time of the year is typ­i­cal­ly just before the mon­soon hits, when tem­per­a­tures rou­tine­ly top the triple dig­it mark in the oth­er­wise semi-arid north.

This year, though, has been any­thing but rou­tine.