According to the Dawn, a Pakistan-based newspaper, it was an extremely hot day in Karachi, with a maximum temperature of 39.2oC on Sunday. However, this high mercury level was aggravated by the extreme humidity that made it feel like 55oC.
The metropolis’ average monthly temperatures were four degrees above normal for all days of June and July as well as August when this heat wave occurred, says Dr Sardar Sarfaraz the Chief Meteorologist at Pakistan’s Meteorological Department. The wretched phenomena of high levels of humidity make weather unbearable (i.e., “very difficult to bear”).
Sarfaraz added: “Sunday’s reading at 5 pm was 39.2 degrees Celsius but felt like 55 degrees Celsius.” As he noted, these current weather conditions have been the hottest since the devastating heatwave incident in 2015 which had seen its maximum recorded at that time.
The last time Karachi experienced these kinds of conditions was nine years ago, he explained about the situation then Sarfaraz stated when asked about how high those temperatures were. From July to September during this last spell of excessive temperature anomalies, deviations from mean temperature remained around or exceeded four degrees Celsius threshold in Karachi according to him.
According to Met department records, there has been no other year with such a sweltering weather condition as this one where up to 42 degrees Celsius has been measured as its highest temperature ever achieved so far; there were also heatwaves in two previous years caused by low atmospheric pressure areas: one each happening during both twenty fifteen and twelve twenty four.
“What typically occurs here is due to high levels of humidity increasing manifold the feels-like temperature making it very difficult to bear,” he said. In fact eighty percent while sometimes even higher than ninety percent have been normal values for relative humidity over the past two months-months.
He described June’s lowest recording for minimum temperature being around twenty-nine to thirty degrees Celsius. The average temperature for June in Karachi was 47oC, which was set on 18th June 1979. On the other hand, the monthly maximum temperature of May attained a record high of forty-eight degrees Celsius with it being registered as such since May 9th 1938.
Reflecting on this study by World Weather Attribution that linked Pakistan’s catastrophic floods in 2022 to a changing climate, Dr Sarfaraz explained: “The world is warming up as weather patterns change,” he said. The global rise in temperatures suggests more frequent and violent extreme weathers are expected. After all according to studies, these phenomena have been forecasted to be increasingly intense and persistent hence making them more dangerous for humanity.
