Killer Heat Is Here

The record temperatures ravaging India are a warning of global catastrophes to come

- Chris Kay and Pratik Parija

Even after three decades of growing wheat and rapeseed on his small plot in Punjab, India’s traditional breadbasket, Inderjit Singh was caught offguard by the heat wave that began rolling across South Asia early this spring. Temperatures in India typically peak in May before the start of monsoon rains. But this year they began hitting searing highs in March, with some days well above 40C (104F). Singh’s crops were ravaged. “There’s no way out for us,” says Singh, 58. “We can’t do anything about it.”

By now, people in developed countries are used to dire predictions of the catastrophes that scientists say will become routine in a warmer world. In India and neighboring Pakistan, some of the worst scenarios are playing out already—and providing an unsettling window into what may await the rest of us.

Temperatures in some areas hit 49C in May, and in one Pakistani city, Jacobabad, they’re regularly breaking the 50C mark. In the western Indian state of Gujarat, dehydrated birds are falling out of the sky; in Delhi, a mountain of garbage combusted into a noxious blaze. Pakistan’s 7,000 glaciers are thawing rapidly; the glacial melt has been so forceful that a recent flash flood washed away a bridge. “What is shocking is the rapid speed of this change. We didn’t expect the temperatures to increase so much, so fast,” says Zahra Khan Durrani, a climate researcher in Islamabad.