World capitals face more days over 35 C

Climate Focus

By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

Hello,

Today’s newsletter focuses on the rising temperatures across the world’s capital cities.

The number of days reaching a sizzling 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) in 20 of the world’s largest capitals – from Delhi to Jakarta to Buenos Aires – has risen 52% over the past three decades, a think tank analysis found on Friday.

More than 300 million people live in the world’s 20 most populous capital cities, where they are uniquely vulnerable to rising temperatures fueled by climate change, as asphalt and buildings absorb and retain heat.

Using surface temperature data from airport weather stations, researchers from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) found that from 2014 to 2023 there were nearly 6,500 cumulative days when one of the 20 cities reached temperatures of 35 C or higher.

In the decade from 1994 to 2003, there were just 4,755.

“We know that hot weather is not felt evenly across cities,” said Tucker Landesman, a researcher with IIED. “Pockets of extreme heat are more likely in certain types of neighborhoods and commercial districts. This is tied to inequality and how we design buildings and public infrastructure.”

Capital cities including Delhi, Dhaka and Manila have been plagued by dangerous heatwaves this year, leading to a spate of heat-related deaths and school closures.

Delhi alone documented its longest and most severe heatwave in 74 years, registering 39 consecutive days with maximum temperatures at or above 40 C (104 F) from May 14 to June 21, according to weather station data.

Speaking of Delhi, residents of the city, who endured one of the worst heat waves in history earlier this month, now face severe water-logging with record-breaking rainfall in just 24 hours, surpassing the city’s average for the entire month of June.

The torrential downpour caused a fatal airport roof collapse, disrupted flights, closed a metro station, blocked underpasses, and led to massive traffic jams, turning the city’s relief from the heat into chaos.

Delhi has not recorded so much rain in the entire month of June at least in the last 15 years, data from the India Meteorological Department shows. On Friday, in three hours alone, areas around the Delhi airport got 148.5 mm of rain, compared with 101.7 mm for all of June last year.

Indervir Singh has worked for the Delhi Fire Services for 32 years but he can’t recall responding to as many fires as this summer.

Temperatures in the Indian capital, home to around 20 million people, have hit record highs this year, hitting nearly 50 C on several occasions.

Calls reporting fires between April and June more than doubled from a year ago to over 9,000, fire services data show. And deaths from fires more than tripled in that period, from just 10 a year ago. Click here for the full Reuters special report.

Firefighter Sijender Kumar, 54, pulls a water pipe as he and others try to extinguish a fire that broke out at a car scrapyard in New Delhi, India. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi 

Record floods that killed over 170 people and displaced half a million in southern Brazil are a warning sign of more disasters to come throughout the Americas because of climate change, an official at the United Nations’ refugee agency said.

Roughly 389,000 people in the state of Rio Grande do Sul remain displaced from their homes because of the intense rain and flooding, which local officials say was the worst disaster in the region’s history. Scientists say climate change made the flooding twice as likely to happen. 

Last year, about two-thirds of Indonesia – including all of Java – experienced the most severe dry season since 2019 due to the El Nino weather phenomenon that lasted longer than usual, causing drought that hurt crops and exacerbated forest fires. This year, meteorologists expect more rain, but many farmers are still struggling.

Farmers in Mount Bromo rely on rain and rain-fed lakes for irrigation, but the drier weather has forced farmer Irawan Karyoto, 56, to plant less lucrative spring onions instead of potatoes in his 2-hectare (5 acre) plot. Click here for the full Reuters special report.

Wildfires above the Arctic Circle in June have unleashed carbon emissions that are the third highest for the time of year in two decades of monitoring, the latest data from European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) showed

As climate change raises Arctic temperatures, wildfires have shifted north where they blaze through boreal forest and tundra, releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gasses from carbon-rich organic soils.

European Union lawmakers are split over whether to delay the bloc’s upcoming ban on imports of goods linked to deforestation, adding pressure to Ursula von der Leyen as she seeks their backing for a second term as European Commission president.

Recent torrential rains in Chile have brought back to life — for now at least — reservoirs and lagoons that had all but dried up after years of drought, with dramatic images of cracked lake beds replaced by mirror-like still waters. Click here for the video and click here for the Reuters report.

EU companies are gearing up to take advantage of the huge potential for recycling to supply critical rare earths for the bloc’s green transition, but it will take time before there is enough supply of old electric vehicles and wind turbines to process.

Under the Critical Raw Materials Act that entered into force last month, the bloc has set a target that recycling should meet 25% of EU demand for critical minerals by 2030, including rare earths.

Today, less than 1% of rare earths consumed in the EU are recycled.

The 25% target is not due to be met according to a Reuters analysis, but in the longer term, the outlook is strong for the bloc to furnish a large portion of the rare earths needed for electric vehicles and wind turbines from salvaging and re-processing them.

The heatwave in Saudi Arabia blamed for the deaths of 1,300 people on the haj pilgrimage this month was made worse by climate change, a team of European scientists said on Friday.

Temperatures along the route from June 16 to 18 reached 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) at times and exceeded 51.8 C at Mecca’s Great Mosque.

The heat would have been approximately 2.5 C (4.5 F) cooler without the influence of human-caused climate change, according to a weather attribution analysis by ClimaMeter.

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