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A man covers his head with a piece of cloth during a heatwave in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Xinhua News Agency/PA Images

Temperatures close to 50 degrees in Pakistan during major South-Asia heatwave

“It’s like fire burning all around,” said labourer Shafi Mohammad, who is from a village where residents struggle to find drinking water.

OFFICIALS IN PAKISTAN have warned of acute water shortages as a result of a blistering heatwave which has been deemed a threat to health.

Parts of the country have been struggling with extremely high temperatures since late April while the city of Jacobabad in Sindh province hit 49.5 degrees yesterday.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has forecast that temperatures will remain the same until the end of the week.

PMD Chief Forecaster Zaheer Ahmad Babar said: “This year we have jumped from winter right into summer”.

Pakistan has endured heightened heatwaves since 2015, he said, focused in upper Sindh province and southern Punjab province.

“The intensity is increasing, and the duration is increasing, and the frequency is increasing,” he said.

A nurse in Jacobabad told the AFP that for the past six years, heatstroke cases in the city have been diagnosed earlier in the year – starting in May, rather than June or July.

Nationwide temperatures are between 6 and 11 degrees hotter than normal for the time of year, which the World Meteorological Organization has said is due to the effects of climate change.

Sheep have reportedly died from heatstroke and dehydration in the Cholistan Desert of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province which also serves as the national breadbasket.

“There is a real danger of a shortfall in food and crop supply this year in the country should the water shortage persist,” one official said.

The Indus river, Pakistan’s key waterway, has shrunk by 65% due to the lack of rain and snow in the past year.

On Tuesday, Climate Minister Sherry Rehman warned residents in the eastern megacity of Lahore “to take cover for the hottest hours of the day”.

Pakistan, home to 220 million people, says it is responsible for less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

However, it ranks as the eighth most affected nation by extreme weather events, according to a 2021 study by environmental group Germanwatch.

The heatwave has also ravaged India, with temperatures in parts of Rajasthan hitting 48.1 degrees on Thursday and expected to hit 46 degrees in Delhi anytime from Sunday.

Suman Kumari, 19, a student who lives in northwest Delhi, told AFP: “It was so hot today that I felt exhausted and sick while returning from college in a bus. The bus seemed like an oven. With no air conditioning, it was sizzling hot inside,” she said.

© AFP 2022

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    Mute JusticeForJoe
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    May 13th 2022, 7:17 PM

    We got very lucky, geographically, here. I’m extremely grateful for it.

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    Mute Robert Preston
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    May 14th 2022, 11:26 AM

    @JusticeForJoe: How do your figure that . When they were handing out tickets for Ireland place on the globe at the start of the big bang .

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    Mute JusticeForJoe
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    May 14th 2022, 11:32 AM

    @Robert Preston: Ahh Robert. Ireland didn’t get its place on the globe from the Big Bang. We also won’t get to stay where we are.
    “Just as our continents were once all connected in the supercontinent known as Pangea (which separated roughly 200 million years ago), scientists predict that in approximately 200-250 million years from now, the continents will once again come together”

    https://www.labroots.com/trending/earth-and-the-environment/19324/continents-again

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    Mute Stephen Hughes
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    May 13th 2022, 8:54 PM

    Send Eamonn over to sort it out

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    Mute Jerriko17
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    May 13th 2022, 9:20 PM

    @Stephen Hughes: He’s trying to….. But we have to burn our turf….. For ol times sake… Sure it’s our tradition… It’s heat or food… Our 1st world problems pale into insignificance compared to this and even more disturbing knowing that we’re part of the problem causing it.

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    Mute Anthony Guinnessy
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    May 13th 2022, 10:26 PM

    @Jerriko17: maybe they should stop burning coal?

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    Mute motojack
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    May 14th 2022, 7:06 AM

    @Jerriko17: ah sure we just love to burn a bit of turf it’s all good craic! No reason for it other to have fun.

    How do you heat your house? I’d say you could power a nuclear reactor with your smugness

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    Mute Jerriko17
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    May 14th 2022, 9:03 AM

    @Anthony Guinnessy: Yes and we should stop burning fossil fuels too…. No difference.

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    Mute Jerriko17
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    May 14th 2022, 9:17 AM

    @motojack: I think there’s more smugness coming from the idea that you can burn what you want and care less about it having a detrimental effect on yourself and your neighbours near and far. No going back, we have to change, find and fund alternatives…. That’s the hard bit and it’s not going to be easy!!

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    Mute Annette
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    May 13th 2022, 8:44 PM

    So awful for them.

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    Mute Sean Walsh
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    May 13th 2022, 11:13 PM

    If they just tax the s h 1 te out of everything over there, it will go away. That’s what the Greens say.

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    Mute Ned
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    May 13th 2022, 9:51 PM

    Sure it’s always extremely hot there by our standards
    But the climate change crowd use it anyway to promote their ideology

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    Mute Declan B
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    May 13th 2022, 10:59 PM

    @Ned: You would have been one of those people on the Titanic saying it couldn’t be sunk !

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    Mute Stephen Foster
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    May 13th 2022, 11:05 PM

    @Ned: I think you’re kinda missing the point? It’s 10 degree’s hotter than normal. Just because it’s always hot there isn’t really the issue.

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    Mute Paul Furey
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    May 14th 2022, 12:16 AM

    @Ned: Millions of well educated specialists from all over the worls and that have peer validated facts or Ned from thejournals comments section……who to believe????

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    Mute Desmond Lyons
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    May 14th 2022, 4:01 AM

    @Stephen Foster: it’s not always hot there! I spent a January in Lahore. The weather was pleasantly cool with sunshine and some cloudy
    days, very little rain but no shortage of water like there is now with the drop in the level of the Indus.

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    Mute The Red Devil
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    May 13th 2022, 11:33 PM

    It’s probably the Turf burning …….,,isn’t it Eamon

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    Mute John O Connor
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    May 14th 2022, 7:21 PM

    Doubling population will add more minds to help solve the carbon crisis.

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