It seems to be extreme and no end in sight. Is anyone there that can provide details? Is it mentioned in the US media?
The consequences are breathtaking. It is being reported that the government has cancelled over 750 passenger trains, so that coal carrying trains can circulate freely. They are needed to generate the electricity to power the air conditioning (Link in German and probably paywalled).
And the garbage in New Delhi spontaneouly self combusts:
How is this going to affect crops? Is widerspread hunger in India and Pakistan a realistic possibility? How bad could this become before the monsoon rains bring relief?
I have seen it mentioned in U.S. media, a headline yesterday said the heatwave was “borderline unlivable” heat. But it isn’t getting super widespread attention, but there have been front page stories about it.
Replying only for India, do not know about Pakistan.
I have not met any dopers who actually live in India. My parents and extended family do live in the heat wave zone and have had AC run all the time over the last week. Its an unprecedented heat wave.
The heat wave location coincides with the Wheat growing zone and will effect the wheat crop. Wheat farmers were expecting good profits due to the Ukraine war, but thats not going to happen.
Expect wheat /flour prices to go up worldwide.
The heat wave does not effect all of India or other crops like rice which start after monsoon.
Speaking for India : No, Plans are put into effect in India to store food for years to come. Just like strategic Oil reserves in the US, India has strategic food reserves.
Countries like Afghanistan, which relies on cheap wheat exports from India may suffer. It is important to note that in 2021, Pakistan blocked all land routes for transporting wheat to Afghanistan from India - that may happen again with devastating consequences.
Thats speculation territory, but India will pull through. Sort of like how the West Coast of the US pulled through the heat wave in 2021. I was vacationing in Seattle, WA and met many folks from Oregon who had driven north to escape the heat.
Thanks for the information. People in Europe are worried that wheat price rises will lead to trouble in Northern Africa, like during the Arab Spring some years ago. Syria, Libya, Tunesia and Egypt are still feeling the consequences, that would be bad. Strategic reserves sounds reassuring, I hope they work: War in Russia/Ukraine and heat wave in India is a bad combination. And fertilizer is so expensive that many farmers are cutting the use down, Bloomberg writes. Sri Lanka is worrying too, with political mistakes making the problem worse.
The map you linked to looks awfully hot, hardly a place below 35°C and up to 45°C!
In India, there are parts which traditionally have wheat (bread) as their staple crop while other parts have rice as their staple crop. It has gotten diversified though, which is good.
How is it with Europe ? I have mostly visited Germany and Italy and rice is still not part of the mainstream diet.
Just a side-note - but it seems to me Afghanistan’s main problem would be transport corridor or not, they don’t have the money. The USA has frozen most of the former government’s foreign currency deposits, and anyway, the economy was heavily dependent on the wads of money being sent by the USA to prop up the previous government. There is already food problems, from what I saw in the media.
Here in Canada we’ve seen a lot of muted protest by people who have relative back in India, particularly Punjab. This centers around a series of bills to remove price supports from farmers, allowing them to sell on the open market. The fear is that this will become the “open” market, a few monopolists will corner the market for buying farm production and short-change the farmers for fun and profit.
As I understand, these bills have been retracted after some unrest in India, but no indication what effect this will have / has had on farming so far, and whether this is not a problem going forward. If there’s the potential for weather problems, the last thing India needs is economic man-made disruptions too.
I was in India last month and the heat was considerable (100F, 36C) even in the Western city of Mumbai, which is located on the coast and is supposed to be more moderate. I was in Delhi for a day and it was burning at 107.6F (42C). These temperatures were not normal for that time of the year (March-April). We have now entered the hottest part of summer but the temperatures in the map are more still a little excessive, though not by too much - even Chennai in the deep south can hit 44C (111F) during the day and remain around 33C (91F) at midnight.
On the positive side, the monsoon rains are less than a month away, and are predicted to be nearly normal.
Doubt if India will experience mass hunger - India has extremely good strategic reserves of the food staples, established because Indian agriculture is so dependent upon the health of the monsoon. Perishables like some seasonal vegetables may be affected, but not wheat or rice. It is estimated that India has grain stocks in excess of 97 million metric tonnes.
Europe is quite varied: risotto (northern Italy) and paella (Spain, mainly in the Mediterranean coast) are rice based and frequent, polenta is corn (northern Italy), Germans are called Kartoffel in some quarters for a reason, potatoes are an important part of the diet in Eastern Europe too, and then there is fish and chips.
But in general the main source of flour for bread is wheat, with some rye. Barley is important for beer.
Corn (maize) is used more for feed than for food (polenta apart), but then we eat the animals, so it is important.
And then there is more and more ethanol production, mainly from corn (maize), which competes with feed & food uses.
I am reading a lot of sources that fear that fertilizer use will decline due to rising prices. That should reduce yields and production, raising food prices.
Oil seems to be a very particular market at the moment. Indonesia has banned the export of palm oil, let’s see for how long. In Europe sunflower oil and rape oil (I believe you call it canola?) are being rationed by the shops, not the state. Ukraine was the leading producer, Russia the second, that will remain a tight market for some time.
20 percent of the US Income flows to the top 1 percent. And taxes are not for the elite in the US.
We can talk about social inequalities in India and the US, but thats a separate topic.
Its a work in progress for India. After Independence from the British, it was debated if; Communism like China ,where people forego rights but get economic equality fairly quickly or the long drawn out economic equality of Democracy be embraced. Democracy won, and its taking longer than China to get there, but thats where India is headed.
I would caution against looking at the absolute maximum. Thats something reached for
few minutes in the middle of the afternoon. A better metric is the mean and the minimum temperature.
Thats not been too much off thus far. Islamabad is about 21C and its 24C
They probably will this time but, as climate change produces more and more and more of these catastrophic events, the reserves will run out and the cumulative effects will become unbearable. When does “almost unlivable” become truly unlivable? Stay tuned because I really believe that we’re going to find out.
That’s true for Miami and Manhattan too. Was true for New Orleans too - but they rebuilt right where the Climate scientists were saying not to. We live near Houston, and had 125 year event floods - followed by Record Freeze / Powerouts.
India will be just as fine as the world overall, if anything People will fare better because they are used to hardships.
Yeah, I work on clean energy. I am very well informed.
