Dear MEL Topic Readers,
'Mornings and nights no longer exist' at 47C: A day in the hottest
place in India
Banda District in Uttar Pradesh, India, sits near the Tropic of Cancer,
where the Sun appears directly overhead during the summer solstice. In late
May, the hottest month of the region, temperatures of 47-49C continued for
nearly 10 days there. Around two million live in the broader Banda, many of whom
work outdoors, such as farming, construction, and transport. People start
working before sunrise, take a break indoors between noon and around 4 pm, and then
resume their work until 7 pm, working for the same hours while enduring the
heat. Indeed, they have little or no option but to live with the heat. And the
situation has become more intolerable in the last few years as the tree cover
has fallen for farming and mining, and sand mining and groundwater depletion
have weakened the cooling mechanism in the surrounding landscape. In fact,
Banda is part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which is regarded as one of the world’s
emerging hotspots for dangerous humid heat. It is becoming hotter for longer,
and the landscape is losing more trees and water, unendurable conditions for
residents, especially for children and elderly people who are vulnerable to
extreme heat. Not air conditioning, but trees, shade, and water are more sustainable
means for mitigating the heat in Banda.
Read the article and learn about one of the world’s hottest urban environments.
No comments:
Post a Comment