BRUSSELS/ISLAMABAD – As Pakistan has been witnessing the devastating effects of global warming, 2024 saw the summer being warmest on record.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the June to August period this year surpassed the record set in 2023, as it calculated the data for the northern hemisphere.

The C3S is the European Union’s climate change monitoring service which shared the findings in its monthly bulletin.

It is now likely that 2024 will outrank 2023 as the planet’s warmest on record, after human-driven climate change and El Nino combined together earlier this year to fuel the process of rising temperatures.

“During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,” said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess.

Unless countries urgently reduce their planet-heating emissions, extreme weather “will only become more intense”, she said. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change.

SOUTH ASIA AND WATER SCARCITY

Earlier, scientists in different reports have warned repeatedly that South Asia is among the worst-affected regions. The global warming effects are very visible in the rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, Karakorum and Hindukush mountains.

The alarming developments are exacerbated by the fact that South Asia has been witnessing reduction in annual rainfall and snowfall. With rainy seasons [both winter and monsoon] getting erratic, it means water scarcity is certainly the biggest challenge to a region which is home to over 1.6 billion people.

So, one shouldn’t be surprised that ensuring food security should be a priority for Pakistan and other South Asian countries. The reason is simple: the traditional crop pattern cannot withstand the changes in weather pattern produced by global warming.

EXTREME WEATHER

Rising temperatures have various effects. It can lead to heatwaves and droughts in some regions while increasing intensity of rains in others. In fact, the same region may experience drought followed by floods caused by heavy rains.

The 2022 floods during 2022 monsoon season are a stark reminder for Pakistan. It wasn’t riverine flooding; these floods were caused by torrential rains in Sindh, Balochistan and parts of southern Punjab caused by multiple monsoon systems coming from the east.

In short, the local topography could not sustain the rains or the amount of water, thus the rainwater inundating the region.

On the other hand, the region comprising northeastern and upper Punjab, Kashmir and upper Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan is known as monsoon belt, where annual rainfall has reduced significantly during the past 40 years.