A heat wave in India

The Republic of India experienced a terrible heat wave, and more than 700 heat deaths, in 2024. Frequency and intensity of heat waves in the country have increased steadily over decades. With regard to the monetary measurement of the 2024 heat wave: there was a loss of 247 billion potential labor hours, chiefly in the construction and agricultural sectors, amounting to a cost of $194 billion dollars.

India is sometimes regarded as a climate-change anomaly. In a fortunate way. At one scientific conference on the subject, researchers presented a world map on which the degree to which an area’s 2024 temperatures deviated from historical baseline was illustrated by color, from deep red to white. The scientists acknowledged they didn’t know why India was strikingly pale. The pattern is paradoxical: India is subject to devastating summer heat waves, but on an annual basis it is warming more slowly than other countries.

The public danger posed by heat waves may be underappreciated because they are not one of the more photogenic of the ways in which climate change shows up in day-to-day weather patterns. Tornadoes offer the classic visuals, Hurricanes those large-frame satellite photos, flooding offers -- well, flooding. Heat waves are invisible. Nonetheless, the human consequences of 2024 indicate it ought not be taken lightly.

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