/picture alliance, Anadolu, Jan Ali Laghari
Islamabad – Extreme heat has led to thousands of emergencies in Pakistan. With temperatures reaching 50 degrees, thousands of people across the country were treated for heat stroke in hospitals, authorities said today.
The Southeast Asian country has been affected by extreme heat since the beginning of the week – and the heat wave will probably last another week, said climate protection officer Romina Alam. Tomorrow it could be as hot as 51 degrees, said the country’s chief meteorologist, Sardar Sarfraz.
“It’s like living in hell, literally. You feel like you’re walking on burning coals when you step into the sun,” said Zeeshan Khan Shani, a rickshaw driver in Dadu, a town in the southern province of Sindh. Authorities had ordered schools to be temporarily closed because of the heat. Officials said temperatures were up to eight degrees Celsius above normal levels for this time of year and cited climate change as the reason.
Every year, hundreds of people die in Pakistan as a result of climate change. The country itself contributes comparatively little to global CO2emissions.
In the summer of 2022, Pakistan experienced a severe flood disaster that temporarily submerged a third of the country and killed 1,700 people. Asia as a whole is warming faster than the global average, according to an April report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). © dpa/aerzteblatt.de
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