Currently in Boston— May 3rd, 2022
The weather, currently.
The weather has turned a bit unsettled with a lot of clouds overnight and a few showers. The showers will continue into early Tuesday before leaving us with just a spot of drizzle and cool temperatures only in the mid 50s. Another weather system will approach the area for Wednesday with additional showers and again it will continue cool.
April ended up warmer than average but also drier than average so the rain is somewhat welcome. The nicest day of the week is Thursday as temperatures get well into the 60s with lots of sunshine. The forecast becomes a bit fuzzier for the weekend as it could go either wet or dry for Mom. —Dave Epstein
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