Heatwaves occupy an important class of climate-related disasters with a history of causing large scale mortalities. Most of the people do not realize how deadly a heatwave can be because in contrast to the visible and destructive nature of floods, heatwaves are regarded as “silent killers”. With all its fury and destruction, the heatwaves in France in 2003 resulted in 15,000 death (Poumad`ere et al. 2005). At a time when Pakistan was facing the worst flooding of its history in 2010, a heatwave in Moscow caused the death of 11,000 people (Shaposhnikov et al. 2014). Very recently, another deadliest heatwave...

As mentioned earlier, we have used the data of three different RCMs, forced with three different GCMs at a resolution of 0.44° (~ 50km). The models runs are executed under CORDEX (Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment) initiative for South Asia domain. It is important to mention here that CORDEX is an initiative by World Climate Research Project to downscale CMIP5 (Coupled Model’s Intercomparison Project phase 5) simulations using different RCMs over different domains around the globe. The details of the model matrix for this study can be seen from Table 1. We used data of control (1976-2000) as well as...

The process of future climate change modeling is characterized by many types of uncertainties. In order to cater for these uncertainties, the popular approach which is adopted in climate science is called as multi-model ensemble approach (Haensler et al. 2013). Therefore, the results presented in Figure 1 show the average of the three RCMs at each grid-box for the respective time period.

A consistent increase in the number of heatwave events is obvious from Figure 1. It is worth-mentioning that Figure 1 does not show anything over the northern areas of Pakistan. This is because of our heatwave definition, which...

The deadly heatwave hit southern Pakistan in 2015 when temperatures peaked from June 18 to June 23. During this span, additionally from the urban heat island effect, temperatures in Karachi remained above 38°C with June 20 recording the hottest day with a maximum temperature of 45°C. Normally during this time of year, the temperature remains in the range of 33°C to 35°C, thanks to the relatively cool sea breeze blowing towards land that keeps the temperature of Karachi under check from getting hot. However, during this episode, a low pressure was developed over the sea which reversed the direction of...

Based on the analysis presented above, we propose the following recommendations;

Considering an increase in future heatwave frequencies presented in Figure 1, there is a dire need to improve the capacity of PMD in forecasting such events at a reasonable lag-time. Similarly, the capacities of disaster management authorities should be enhanced to address such calamities in future. Moreover, a better coordination between PMD and National/Provisional disaster management authorities (NDMA/PDMA) should be ensured, especially in the Punjab where the heatwaves are projected to increase the most.

During the times of heatwaves, the provision of facilities which reduces the impact of heat...