00:00For more on this, Akshay Dehras joins us on the program.
00:03He is a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Science
00:07and the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading.
00:10Thank you very much for joining us today, sir.
00:13So to get started, I mean, I presume that different things can cause heat waves.
00:17So what's behind this one that we see across southern Europe?
00:23The basic thing is that there is a high-pressure region sitting right over the Europe.
00:27And what this high-pressure is doing, that it is causing clear sky conditions.
00:32It's also preventing formation of rainfall.
00:35And whenever, you know, things like this happen, it leads to clear skies.
00:39And then that leads to high temperatures coming up.
00:41And on top of that, we have got effects of climate change,
00:44which is making temperatures of this range more and more likely.
00:48So, sir, people tend to, you know, like simple explanations.
00:51But I would like to ask you how easy or even realistic it is to link
00:56individual heat waves to anthropogenic climate change.
00:59I mean, how do you see the relationship between the two?
01:05Yeah, so see, heat waves need certain type of weather conditions to occur.
01:09It's not that simple that we just have climate change and there's going to be heat wave, right?
01:13We don't see heat waves throughout the year.
01:15This is the reason why we need to have a perfect weather setup for that.
01:18But what climate change is doing is that it's basically increasing the possibility of seeing
01:24temperatures of this magnitude and the persistence of high temperatures that we are seeing.
01:29So we need meteorology for heat wave.
01:31And on top of that, we have got climate change making things more severe.
01:35As a meteorologist, I mean, do you think that these heat waves are increasingly difficult to predict?
01:40No, I mean, our models are doing quite well.
01:46So we are now in a situation where we get really good quality of weather forecast for about a week or even two weeks ahead.
01:52So for this particular heat wave, forecasts are very clearly indicating that it's going to be a severe one.
01:58Now, Europe is already, as I mentioned earlier, the world's fastest warming continent.
02:02Is it doing enough to mitigate or to adapt to the effects of these warming temperatures, heat waves in particular?
02:10That's right.
02:13I mean, if you look from 1991, Europe is really heating quite a lot at the rate of about 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade.
02:21And that's quite alarming.
02:22I think in terms of mitigation, we still need to beef up because temperatures are increasing at a faster rate.
02:27And if you just see the infrastructure that we have across Europe, for example, our houses are not designed to really lose the heat.
02:34They are designed to retain the heat.
02:36And that's a big factor.
02:37And on top of that, even if we have got proper weather forecast and proper weather warnings, but we still get a lot of people dying, which is why we're just connected to the fact that, you know, people don't really take weather warnings seriously.
02:48So we need to really do work on many fronts.
02:51In that sense, I mean, what are some of the policy priorities or policy changes that you think should be prioritized rather looking forward?
02:59So I think on the basis of just reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that's the very first thing that needs to be done, because, you know, the whole cause of climate change and global warming is this increasing emission of greenhouse gases.
03:16So that needs to cut down, but that will take time.
03:19It needs unanimous action across from different countries of the world, including Europe.
03:24We need to also, you know, beef off mitigation measures, like I said, which basically includes things like, you know, compensating people to stay at home if they are working outside, because that's always a big challenge.
03:36Right. People are people have to go out to work to earn bread and butter.
03:39But if you ask them to stay indoor, how would they get their bread and butter?
03:43So that's one thing required.
03:44And we also need to step up our vigilance system in terms of monitoring health conditions across people.
03:51So I think these three things are really required for the first few years.
03:55As a final question for you, Shur, there seems to be a tension between potentially life-saving adaptations to things like severe heat waves and working to prevent climate change from getting worse.
04:05People, for example, may increasingly need things like air conditioning to make hotter temperatures liverable, though things like air conditioning obviously in turn contribute to global warming.
04:14So how can policymakers find balance between these two realities?
04:20Yeah, I mean, it's a good question.
04:22It's always the hardest part of this because, you know, we know that air cons really work very well.
04:26You just switch on an air con, it would just take a few minutes to cool down your houses.
04:30But because you have got more air cons and if the energy is coming from burning fossil fuels, then that's going to feed back on increasing climate change.
04:37I think we need to focus on redesigning our houses in such a way that we would not require air cons to that extent.
04:45We would basically rely on majors, for example, using some natural techniques to cool down our houses, improving ventilation.
04:52And even if we have to use air cons, then they need to be made more and more energy friendly or, you know, that they would be not really requiring that much of power.
05:01So I think if that things are done, then, you know, we would be in a better position to stop the positive feedback between consuming energy and climate change.
05:09Akshay Dioras, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
