KARACHI:When an unseasonal and potentially deadly heatwave loomed onweather forecasts last month, authorities in this port city tookan unusual step: They issued a public warning, a full week inadvance.
Before the heat hit, text message warning of the danger wentout to Karachi residents.
Hospitals set aside extra beds forheat stroke victims.Water and power company officials were puton alert.
Ultimately the heatwave, with temperatures that reached 41degrees Celsius, passed without claiming lives, Karachi MayorWaseem Akhtar said.
But the warning the first of its kind issued by thePakistan Meteorological Department for Karachi may set thestage for more lifesaving warnings next summer as climate changedrives temperatures higher.
October temperatures in densely populated Karachi normallyrise no higher than 35 or 38 degrees Celsius, said Abdul Rashid,director of the Pakistan Meteorological Department office in Karachi.
Heatwaves in October are extremely rare incidents, hesaid. But being unprepared for extreme heat can be deadly.
In 2015, a June heatwave killed about 1,500 people inKarachi and left over 70,000hospitalised, most with heat stroke.
Officials are now working to try to avoid a repeat of thatheat disaster a particular challenge as climate change brings
ever-hotter years, particularly in already broiling South Asia.
We now keep a closer watch on temperature, air, humidity(and) sunlight parameters of the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea,and register these parameters regularly in the weather charts,which helped predict the October heat wave more accurately andtimely, Rashid told the Thomson ReutersFoundation.
The Karachi office also has its own heatwave forecastdivision, with advanced computer systems connected to fiveheatwave monitoring stations recently installed around the city,he said.
The system was set up following World MeteorologicalOrganization warnings that more frequent and intense heatwaveswere becoming a possibility in the region.
WARNING, THEN ACTION
In October, after spotting heat-producing weather conditionsmoving toward Pakistan from Mumbai and India's Gujarat state,
the office issued a warning to the Sindh provincial government,the Karachi commissioner and provincial disaster management
authorities, Rashid said.
For Karachi's mayor, the alert provided time to send outtext alerts, contact media, warn hospitals and water and powerutility officials and set up special units for heat victims in13 city hospitals.
Dr.Seemi Jamali, head of emergencies at the state-runJinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre in Karachi, said the warninggave time to stock extra medicine, set aside beds and putmedical staff on high alert.
This really helped quickly arrange medical care facilitiesin hospitals for heat wave victims and avoid possible deaths,
she said in an interview in her office.
Residents of Karachi said the unusual October heat is aworry. Octobers have remained always warm in the port city, but I
never experienced this blistering heatwave in all my life inthis month, which made our home feel like a furnace, said Saba
Karim, a 43-year-old garment factory worker.
We all five family members, including my husband, stayedindoors during the heatwave days and would go outside onlyduring night hours to buy groceries, she recalled.
Ghulam Rasul, head of the Pakistan Meteorological Departmentin Pakistan, said the country may be seeing a change in itstraditional pattern of onshore winds blowing cooler air intoKarachi over the summer months.
The lack of that wind was one driver behind Karachi'sOctober heatwave, he said.
Temperatures in the Arabian Sea are showing gradual risingtrends for the last six years because of strange weatherpatterns, which mostly likely increase the frequency andintensity of cyclones, heatwaves, and torrential rains in monthsin which these were never or rarely seen before, said Rasul,who is also Pakistan's permanent representative to the WorldMeteorological Organization.