Vijay Garg
Some scientific evidence suggests that with rising temperatures, a situation called ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’ occurs. This causes rapid changes in the neurotransmitters found in people’s brain. These changes motivate people to take suicidal steps like suicide.
In 2018, researchers at the American University of Stanford identified a strong link between hot weather and rising suicide rates. Led by Stanford economist Marshall Work, the study claimed that the projected temperature increase by 2050 could lead to an additional twenty-one thousand suicides in the United States and Mexico.
Cities in India have been seen as hubs of better infrastructure, excellent public facilities and employment opportunities. People living there expect a good lifestyle. But now cities themselves are becoming a problem for the world. These cities, groaning and facing terrible pollution in the name of facilities, are becoming the center of dilemma instead of convenience for the people living in them due to severe pressure on infrastructure, inflation and increasing distance of residence from places of work. Here in the last few years a new problem has surrounded them. The problem is that there is more heat in cities than in villages. Scientists have called this problem ‘urban heat’. It is also being called urban heat wave. This urban heat wave was noticed in the year 2018, when ‘US Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences had published a report on rising temperatures in forty-four cities of the world. In that research report, focusing on the urban heat occurring in six metropolitan cities of South Asia, it was told that between the years 1979 and 2005, the city of Kolkata, which used to experience severe heat waves for sixteen days every year, now has such days. The number has increased to forty-four.
Research had claimed that the risk of facing urban heat wave has increased by four times in metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata with a population of crores. A warning was also given that now the cities will have to learn to live with this ‘urban heat’ and bear its constant threat.
The ‘Centre for Science and Environment’ has revealed this problem in a detailed report in its magazine ‘Down to Earth’. In this, the question has been raised that how much heat can humans bear in the greenery-less cities turning into concrete jungles. The question is also that what is there in big cities or metros that produces many times more heat than the naturally occurring heat waves? The serious side of this is that urban heat wave can show its effect not only in May-June but also in severe winter.
A research paper titled ‘Urban Heat Island over Delhi Punches Holes in Widespread Fog in the Indo-Gangetic Plains’ was published in the ‘Geophysical Research Letters Journal’ of the ‘American Geophysical Union’. It was told that in 2018, the country’s capital Delhi had the least impact of natural fog as compared to the last seventeen years because the pollution and heat generated here had created holes in the fog. Not just Delhi, cities across the world saw a drastic reduction in fog density in winter due to urban pollution.
IIT, Mumbai and ‘University of Petroleum and Energy Studies’ based in Dehradun, after analyzing seventeen years of satellite data of ‘NASA’, called the process of fog clearance as ‘Fog Hole’ and reported that in January, 2018 in Delhi there were ninety fog holes. Researchers had said that the heat of cities is burning the fog, due to which the temperature in cities is four to five times higher than in rural areas. It was told that due to the rapid construction work going on in the cities, increasing urbanization, rapid decline in the green belt and structures being made of concrete, the heat inside the ground gets trapped in the surface or near the surface.
Today’s truth is that urbanization taking place in view of the needs of about 12-15 crore population of twenty-three cities of the country including Delhi-Mumbai, has turned the cities into such ‘heat’ and ‘gas chambers’, which cause extremes of weather. Why have these cities become like this? There are some obvious reasons like, building large numbers of tall buildings in less space and indiscriminate use of electricity to keep them cool, bright and clean. Be it home or office, making them air-conditioned to fight the weather and increasing use of cars etc. for commuting. If millions of air conditioners and refrigerators (AC-fridges) are running in a city at the same time, and millions of cars running on petrol and diesel are releasing heat into the atmosphere along with greenhouse smoke, then there is no possibility of artificially generated air in the cities.
The destructive potential of this heat wave can be estimated. The question is how to deal with this urban heat wave. Till now, it is not possible that we will be able to combat urban heat wave without making some changes in the means and measures being tried to combat the normal seasonal changes. Obviously, for this, some fresh thinking will have to be done regarding urbanization plans. At present, our planners are searching for a solution to the housing problem in view of the increasing needs of the country’s population and the population migrating from villages to cities. There is no blueprint for the things that can spoil the climate.
In the opinion of some Indian planners, urbanization based on concrete tall buildings actually attacks the Gandhian vision of India’s development. Architect AGK Menon had said in this regard that it would be better that we do not copy the so-called developed western countries in the matter of building future cities and make plans keeping in mind our traditions. Only if this happens will we be able to combat urban heat waves and other similar urban tragedies.
(The author is retired principal, educational columnist and can be reached at [email protected])
