Currently in Toronto— May 3rd, 2022
The weather, currently.
More rain on the way! Yet another system will push into the lower Great Lakes on Tuesday and bring rounds of light rain. However, we should start the day fairly dry, with some local fog patches and a temperature near 7°C. It is possible we will see a break early day, but the clouds will continue to thicken up with the leading edge of moisture pushing in just after lunchtime. It will become a widespread rain event for the drive home. The wind will be light from the east, keeping us cooler - the high 13°C.
Tuesday night: periods of rain tapering off by dawn, with a low of 11°C.
What you need to know, currently.
Around 1-in-5 people on the planet — more than 1,500,000,000 people — have already experienced high temperatures in excess of 100°F (38°C) during March and April from Burma and Bangladesh to India, Pakistan, Iran, and the Middle East and North Africa.https://t.co/H5YkhTVFbo
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) May 2, 2022
Today, we published a piece by Currently’s founder Eric Holthaus, about the weeks-long heatwave blanketing India and Pakistan.
“Translated into heat stress on human bodies, this heatwave has approached ‘uninhabitable’ levels — and is a preview of truly dangerous climate change in one of the most heat-vulnerable places on Earth,” Holthaus writes.
This year’s March and April were the hottest months in North and Central India’s 122-year-long record. Preliminary data also suggests that this April is the fourth hottest in India’s entire climatic history.
Similarly in Pakistan, this March was the hottest on record since 1961. On Sunday, temperatures reached 121.1°F (49.5°C) in Nawabshah, which is the hottest temperature on record in the Northern Hemisphere so far this year. The country has also been hit with emergency power outages and heat illness amid Ramadan, the holy month during which Muslim people fast from sunrise to sunset.
And, the worst of the heatwave is yet to come.
“That makes heat wave prevention across South Asia one of the most urgent climate priorities across the entire world,” Holthaus writes. “The easiest way to do that, according to the UN, is to implement heatwave early warning systems that prioritize care for those most vulnerable, and to greatly limit greenhouse gas emissions everywhere on Earth."
Read the full article: The South Asia heat wave is the “emergency” phase of climate change