SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Hindustan Times reports:
An unrelenting heat wave has killed more than 1,100 people across the country over a fortnight with southern neighbours Andhra Pradesh and Telangana bearing the brunt, as torrid temperatures melted roads in the national capital and have forced people indoors.
Authorities said on [May 26] most of the victims were construction workers, the elderly, or the homeless, as the weather office predicted the mercury will continue to soar this week with substantial relief expected only when the southwest monsoon hits the Indian mainland around May 31.
[...] The meteorological department issued "red box" warnings for Odisha, Jharkhand, and coastal Andhra Pradesh, signalling high chances of heatstroke, dehydration, and fatality with temperatures inching upwards of 45°C and conditions worsened by constant dry, sweltering winds.
[The state of] Odisha continued to reel, with [the town of] Titlagarh in Balangir district clocking the highest temperature of 47.6°C [117.7°F], while authorities said they received reports of 67 deaths in the past week.
[...] Experts warned [that] no let-up in the heat wave would lead to large-scale power outages in several parts of north India, bringing back memories of a horrific blackout in 2012 that affected nearly 600 million people.
In a separate story, Arne Winguth, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Texas-Arlington led a study on future environmental conditions in central Texas in the year 2100.
The professor was interviewed by KERA TV:
Winguth's study predicts more cracks and potholes, even buckling and melting of roadways in extreme 125-degree heat.
"The 125° Fahrenheit is a prediction for the future that is predicted for the year 2100. That would be the extreme temperature--that is based on most recent climate assimilation from the National Center for Atmospheric research."
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday May 29 2015, @01:44AM
It's not too difficult to live at that temperature but you have to drink like 15 liters of water a day. You will pretty much never stop drinking.
I lived in Death Valley for nearly three years, including two summers. My first summer there I worked at night and I did not see the temperature drop lower than 92 F from June to late September. Usually by 9 a.m. the temperature was in triple digits and we usually had daily highs in the 110's and several long stretches where it was in the 120's. At that temperature, simply walking the half mile slightly uphill to the housing was taxing, particularly if the wind was blowing. Without drinking constantly, you would feel your heart start pounding harder as your blood thickened. You would not notice the dehydration as sweat evaporated as fast as it came out. If you had a backpack on, underneath would be wet but everything else was dry. When you got inside however, where there was more humidity, it seemed as if the sweat would start pouring out of you. I used to start guzzling water and literally sit naked on top of the AC unit until I stabilized. In Death Valley, with summer humidities sometimes in single digits, the primary risk is dehydration, with heat stroke and death as a final result. I imagine that it is quite a bit more humid in most of India, so the risk of heat prostration, where the sweat does not evaporate fast enough to cool the body, is the greater risk. Same end result though...