By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s national weather authority issued a sweeping heatwave warning Saturday covering most of the country, forecasting temperatures that in some districts of Sindh and Balochistan could climb as high as 51 degrees Celsius — a level of heat that poses acute risks to human life — and cautioning that the scorching conditions would persist through at least June 12.
The Pakistan Meteorological Department said a high-pressure system entrenched in the upper atmosphere is responsible for the surge, which will push daytime highs four to seven degrees above seasonal norms across a vast swath of territory, from the plains of Punjab to the port city of Karachi and the rugged interior of Balochistan. Night temperatures, the agency added, will also climb — a detail that carries particular weight for a population that has historically relied on cooler evening hours to recover from the day’s heat.
The most punishing conditions are expected in a band of districts straddling northern Sindh and eastern Balochistan. In Sukkur, Jacobabad, Larkana, Shikarpur, Qambar Shahdadkot, Mohenjo Daro, Dadu, Shaheed Benazirabad, Ghotki, Khairpur and Naushahro Feroze — as well as Balochistan’s Sibbi, Turbat and Panjgur — maximum temperatures are forecast to range between 48°C and 51°C from Saturday through June 12. Jacobabad, a city with a long and grim record among the hottest inhabited places on earth, sits squarely within that zone.
Across Punjab, the country’s most populous province, conditions will be only marginally less extreme. Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur and more than a dozen other cities and towns are expected to reach between 44°C and 48°C from June 8 through June 11. The capital region is not spared: Islamabad, Rawalpindi and surrounding districts including Attock, Chakwal, Jhelum and Gujrat, as well as the Azad Kashmir cities of Mirpur, Bhimber, Kotli, Bagh and Muzaffarabad, are expected to see highs between 41°C and 44°C over roughly the same period, running five to seven degrees above normal.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the districts of Peshawar, Mardan, Bannu, Karak, Lakki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan are forecast to hit between 41°C and 46°C from June 8 to 11, while the more northerly districts of Chitral, Dir and Swat, along with Gilgit-Baltistan, are expected to reach 37°C to 40°C through June 10 — temperatures that, even at altitude, represent a significant departure from the norm.
Karachi, a coastal megacity of some 20 million people, faces its own strain. The Met Office forecast maximum temperatures between 40°C and 43°C from June 8 through June 12 — numbers that, combined with the city’s notorious humidity, can produce a heat index far deadlier than the thermometer alone suggests.
The agency also warned that intense surface heating will generate dust storms at isolated locations across southern Punjab and Sindh — an additional hazard for respiratory health and road safety in those regions.
In its advisory, the meteorological department urged the general public to avoid unnecessary exposure to direct sunlight between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and to remain adequately hydrated throughout the day. It singled out children, women and senior citizens as particularly vulnerable, calling on them to exercise extra caution. Farmers were advised to adjust crop activities to account for the extreme conditions and to take protective measures for livestock, which can suffer rapid and fatal heat stress.
The agency also flagged the likelihood of a significant spike in electricity demand across the country during the forecast period — a pressure point that has historically strained Pakistan’s grid and led to prolonged load-shedding at precisely the moments when cooling appliances are most critical to survival. Authorities were urged to use water judiciously, and all relevant government bodies were put on alert to take precautionary measures.
Saturday’s warning did not arrive in isolation. Earlier this week, the meteorological department released its seasonal outlook for the June-through-August period, and the picture it painted was sobering. Citing the current behavior of two major oceanic climate drivers, it projected below-normal rainfall and above-normal temperatures across most of the country for the entire summer.
The Indian Ocean Dipole, the agency said, is presently in a neutral phase but is expected to shift to a positive phase by July — a configuration that typically suppresses monsoon rainfall over South Asia. Meanwhile, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation has already moved into a positive, or El Niño, phase and is expected to strengthen further as the season progresses. Together, the two phenomena create conditions unfavorable for the monsoon rains on which Pakistan’s agriculture, water supply and heat relief depend.
The department’s probability outlook reinforced those concerns, indicating a high likelihood of below-normal rainfall across Punjab, Sindh, southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and most of Balochistan. The largest temperature departures from the norm are projected over northeastern Pakistan — particularly eastern Gilgit-Baltistan, Kashmir and adjacent areas of northern Punjab, a region whose glaciers already face accelerating melt.
Pakistan has in recent years become a recurring subject of international climate research focused on extreme heat. In 2022, an early and catastrophic heat event preceded the floods that submerged a third of the country. Scientists have noted that the combination of rising baseline temperatures and the physiological limits of human cooling — the capacity of sweat to regulate core body temperature breaks down near certain combinations of heat and humidity — make parts of Pakistan increasingly dangerous during summer months, even for healthy adults.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
