International locations throughout Asia suffered hovering April temperatures, prompting warnings from scientists that 2023 might set new warmth information as climatic patterns change and international warming accelerates.

Temperatures climbed to highs of 45C in Myanmar, 44.5C in India and 41.9C in China, in accordance with the climatologist and climate historian Maximiliano Herrera, with Thailand and Laos breaking all-time excessive information.

At the very least 13 individuals had been reported to have died from warmth stroke in Mumbai, India, whereas components of Bangladesh endured energy cuts as electrical energy demand surged within the uncommon situations. Greater than 100 climate stations in China recorded all-time excessive temperatures for April.

Herrera mentioned the ferocious temperatures, which have continued throughout components of Asia for greater than every week, amounted to the “worst April heatwave in Asian historical past ongoing in additional than a dozen nations”.

He famous on Friday that report temperatures had been additionally widespread in South America, whereas Japan was experiencing “distinctive warmth”.

India’s Meteorological Division mentioned on Friday that the heatwave was prone to abate from Saturday, after it had recorded “extreme” situations through the week.

Globally, the previous eight years have been the warmest on report, with excessive climate occasions together with heatwaves anticipated to turn into extra frequent and intense as local weather change accelerates. Greenhouse fuel emissions continued to rise in 2022 and temperatures are at the least 1.1C increased since pre-industrial instances.

This yr might additionally mark the return of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which is related to hotter sea floor temperatures within the tropical Pacific and better international temperatures.

Given the potential for an El Niño yr, “it might due to this fact effectively be that new international information are set in 2023 or 2024,” mentioned Helge Goessling, a local weather physicist on the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Analysis in Germany.

“Massive components of south-east Asia, India, China, Australia, and North and South America . . . could also be affected by El Niño, with a pattern in direction of stronger heatwaves and, the place glaciers are current, elevated melting,” he mentioned.

Heatwaves and droughts gripped giant swaths of Europe and China in 2022, with Europe experiencing its second warmest yr on report and hottest ever summer season, in accordance with the Copernicus Local weather Change Service annual report.

The European Alps suffered a report lack of ice from glaciers, whereas excessive temperatures led to report ice sheet melting in Greenland, the remark group mentioned.

China, in the meantime, had its longest-lasting heatwave ever final yr, and its hottest ever summer season by a margin of greater than 0.5C, in accordance with the World Meteorological Organisation’s newest report on the state of the local weather.

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