News Highlight
Nearly all the world’s children will be exposed to more frequent and severe heat waves by 2050, according to a new United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report.
Key Takeaway
- Currently, 559 million children are exposed to at least four to five hazardous heatwaves annually.
- Heat waves with longer duration pose more risks for children as they spend more time outdoors than adults for — sports and other activities — putting them at greater risk for heat injury.
- Children in southern, western and south-eastern Asia, eastern and southern Europe and northern Africa experience heatwaves of longer duration.
Heatwaves
- What?
- A heatwave is any period of three days or more when the maximum temperature each day is in the top 10 per cent of the local 15-day average.
- The IMD criteria for Heat Waves
- Heat Waves need not be considered till the maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 40°C for Plains and at least 30°C for Hilly regions
Impacts of heat waves
- Heat Wave risks to health:
- Heatwave risks to health include
- Heat stroke
- Heat stress
- Allergy
- Chronic respiratory conditions
- Asthma
- Mosquito-borne disease
- Cardiovascular disease
- Under-nutrition
- Diarrhoea.
- Heatwave risks to health include
- Economic Impacts of heat waves
- The livelihood of poor and marginal farmers is negatively impacted due to the loss of working days.
- Heatwaves also hurt daily wage workers’ productivity, impacting the economy.
- Impact on Agriculture Sector
- Researchers at Cornell University estimate that, by 2100, milk yields in India could drop by 25% (against 2005 levels) in arid and semi-arid dairy farming due to increased heat stress.
- Food Insecurity
- The concurrence of heat and drought events is causing crop production losses and tree mortality.
- Crop yields suffer when temperatures exceed the ideal range.
- Human Mortality
- Mortality due to heat waves occurs because of rising temperature, lack of public awareness programmes, and inadequate long-term mitigation measures.
The ways to mitigate the impacts of the heat waves
- Public Awareness and Early Warning Systems
- Disseminating public awareness through print, electronic and social media, providing heat-proof shelter facilities in heatwave-prone areas during summer, easing access to public drinking water, and afforestation programmes in urban and rural areas would help mitigate heat wave fatalities.
- Implementing Climate Action Plans
- The National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC) should be implemented in true spirit for inclusive growth and ecological sustainability.
- Recognition of Heat Waves as a Natural Disaster
- Declaring heat waves as a natural disaster would help the state and district administration prepare a heatwave action plan at the regional level.
- Sustainable Cooling
- Passive cooling technology, a widely-used strategy to create naturally ventilated buildings, can be a vital alternative for residential and commercial buildings to address the urban heat island.
- Climate-Resilient Crops
- A dynamic understanding of risks is needed to evaluate whether the crops we have relied on so far will also be the ones to provide food and nutrition security in future.
Content Source: Down to earth