Saturday, May 30, 2015

With over 2000 deaths, India experiencing 5th deadliest heatwave in the world


India, with the death toll crossing 2000, is experiencing the 5th deadliest heatwave in the world as per an international database of disasters and reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 31 May 2015. The arrival of monsoons is delayed, it is overdue and the weathermen predict that there would be some more delays.
The deaths due to the current heatwave is maximum from the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telengana, while affecting large parts of the rest of the country.
For the records, the deadliest heatwave on record in India is the one of 1998 one in which 2,541 people died. However, in 2003, there has been recorded the most lethal heatwave in the world which killed more than 71,310 people in Europe. These figures are maintained in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) and by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) based in Brussels, Belgium.
As per records, six of the top ten heatwaves in terms of deaths have occurred in the 21st century, which has also recorded eight of the ten warmest years ever since records of global temperatures were started being kept.
2014 was tied at the warmest year on record with 1998, and the first quarter of 2015 has already been declared the warmest on record. Obviously, one can assume that global warming and increasing population are the contributory factors to the increasing ferocity of heatwaves.
Incidentally, in the list of top ten deadliest disasters, Indian heatwaves figure four times — 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2015.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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