{"id":61734,"date":"2024-05-29T21:35:43","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T21:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/29\/whats-increasing-indias-heat-stress-study-reveals-megacities-experiencing-heat-stress\/"},"modified":"2024-05-29T21:35:43","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T21:35:43","slug":"whats-increasing-indias-heat-stress-study-reveals-megacities-experiencing-heat-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/29\/whats-increasing-indias-heat-stress-study-reveals-megacities-experiencing-heat-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s increasing India’s heat stress? Study reveals – Megacities experiencing heat stress"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Megacities experiencing heat stress<\/h2>\n<\/div>\nAccording to a new report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), megacities in India are experiencing more heat stress due to increased concretisation and humidity levels, and they are not cooling down at night as quickly as they did ten years ago. From January 2001 to April 2024, the CSE examined data on summer air temperature, land surface temperature, and relative humidity for six megacities: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai.<\/caption>\n

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Average temperature has increased<\/h2>\n<\/div>\nThe think tank found that increased humidity is worsening heat stress across all climate zones, even nullifying the marginal drop in air temperatures in Delhi and Hyderabad. Barring Bengaluru, summertime average relative humidity has increased by 5-10 per cent in the other five megacities from 2014-2023 compared to the 2001-2010 average.<\/caption>\n

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Heat stress and illness<\/h2>\n<\/div>\nAvikal Somvanshi, senior programme manager at CSE’s Urban Lab, said addressing the combination of high heat and humidity is particularly important as it can compromise the human body’s main cooling mechanism, sweating. “The evaporation of sweat from the skin cools our bodies, but higher humidity levels limit this natural cooling. As a result, people can suffer heat stress and illness, and the consequences can even be fatal at much lower ambient temperatures,” he explained.<\/caption>\n

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\"Nighttime<\/div>\nThe study showed that megacities are not cooling down at night. The land surface temperature during the summers of 2001-2010 would drop by 6.20-13.20 degrees Celsius from the daytime peak to the nighttime low. In the last 10 summers (2014-2023), night-time cooling has reduced to 6.20-11.50 degrees Celsius, the CSE said. “Hot nights are as dangerous as midday peak temperatures. People get little chance to recover from daytime heat if temperatures remain high overnight,” Somvanshi said.<\/caption>\n

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\"Monsoons<\/div>\nThe study said that rising humidity levels have also made monsoons in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai hotter than pre-monsoon periods. It noted that all megacities have become more concretised in the last two decades, increasing heat stress. The CSE highlighted that an increase in green cover is not effective in mitigating nighttime heat.<\/caption>\n

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May 29, 2024, 05:25:42 PM IST 1\/5 Megacities experiencing heat stress According to a new report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), megacities in India are experiencing more heat stress due to increased concretisation and humidity levels, and they are not cooling down at night as quickly as they did ten years ago. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.etimg.com\/thumb\/msid-110537458,width-640,resizemode-4,imgsize-35146\/megacities-experiencing-heat-stress.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[602],"tags":[32755,35310,29533,9961,1029,33276,59589,32347,925,59590,1185,6660,250,300],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61736,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61734\/revisions\/61736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}