India may endure extreme heat waves beyond the threshold for human survival, according to a World Bank report. Over the past two decades, the nation has documented a number of deaths brought on by extreme heat waves.
The Report: Climate Investment Opportunities in India’s Cooling Sector
The country is reportedly seeing greater temperatures that arrive earlier and last much longer, according to a World Bank report titled “Climate Investment Opportunities in India’s Cooling Sector,” as reported by PTI.
According to the report, India experienced a terrible early spring heat wave in April 2022 that brought the nation to a stop and caused temperatures in the capital, New Delhi, to rise to 46 degrees Celsius. The warmest month ever recorded was March, which had very high-temperature rises.
Similar research by IIT Gandhinagar scientists predicts that as a result of climate change, India will experience an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events like floods and heatwaves.
The research team looked at the years 1951 to 2020 to assess India’s risk of successive extremes, such as summer heatwaves and severe rainfall during the next summer monsoon season over the same places.
“The G20 Climate Risk Atlas also warned in 2021 that heat waves across India were likely to last 25 times longer by 2036-65 if carbon emissions remain high, as in the IPCC’s worst-case emission scenario,” the report said.
According to one study, the share of the entire population and metropolitan area that will be exposed to successive extremes will climb quickly if the global mean temperature rises by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial level.
The length of a heatwave will increase from an average of 3 days in the current climate (1981-2010) to 11 days by the end of the twenty-first century, according to the researchers, under the lowest emission scenario (2071-2100).
However, they projected that by the end of the century, the length of heat waves will reach 33 days under the scenario with the highest emissions.
Economic Losses in India
Up to 380 million people, or 75% of India’s employment, are dependent on heat-exposed labour, frequently labouring in potentially fatal conditions. India may contribute 34 million of the anticipated 80 million job losses worldwide due to heat stress-related productivity drop by 2030, says the report.
Further, it claimed that among South Asian nations, India suffered the most effects from heat exposure on hard labour, losing more than 101 billion hours annually.
According to a McKinsey & Company analysis, by the end of this decade, lost labour due to rising temperatures and humidity might threaten up to 4.5 percent of India’s GDP, or roughly $150–250 billion.
A Need for Cold Chain Network
A trustworthy cold chain network would be necessary for India’s long-term food security and public health security, according to the report.
Fresh fruit can rot, and vaccine effectiveness can be diminished by a single temperature blip during transportation, shattering the cold chain. Only 4% of India’s fresh produce is protected by cold chain facilities, resulting in estimated annual food losses of USD 13 billion.
It was noted that prior to COVID-19, India, the third-largest pharmaceutical producer in the world, lost about 20% of temperature-sensitive medicinal items and 25% of vaccines as a result of faulty cold chains, resulting in losses of USD 313 million annually.
However, in a nation where two-thirds of the population live on less than USD 2 a day, and where the average cost of an air-conditioning unit can vary between USD 260 and USD 500, air-cooling systems are a luxury available only to a few, according to the analysis presented in the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP). Only 8% of Indian households own air-conditioning units, according to the analysis.
To preserve thermal comfort, indoor and electric fans might be useful, but they are also expensive and ineffective to purchase. As a result of living in hot, packed dwellings with poor ventilation and without suitable access to cooling, many impoverished and marginalised populations throughout India are more susceptible to high heat, according to the report.
