Chief Meteorologist Shaukat Awan said while talking to APP here recently that whole region, including Afghanistan and India are in the grip of heat waves and in most parts of these countries temperature remain higher than normal due to global warming.
"In fact global warming phenomenon is affecting the whole world", he said. Awan said that April's average temperature in Lahore usually remains 34C but mercury touched the mark of 42 degree during the mid of this month.
Though a localised system had provided some respite when some parts of the city received drizzle on April 18 but mercury again started rising and touched 43C on April 28.
He said that similar trend of higher temperature is being experienced in other parts of the country, including the Northern Areas where increased glacial melting has led to greater water in rivers.
"Increased melting of glaciers would start showing negative affects after some years as water flow to rivers would start declining after the base of glaciers would have melted away", he observed.
He cautioned if "arrangements" were not made for conservation of surplus water during the period of increased flow, the country may face serious water shortage when water flow would begin to fall over the coming years.
He stressed that in case of lack of planning to conserve additional available water during the period when water flow is on the higher side, the country is likely to face flooding.
Similarly, many areas would face the threat of desertification when there would be less water in rivers and no water available to overcome the shortage.
The expert said that a number of countries are already facing this problem and have lost their fertile lands which have turned into deserts due to dearth of water.
Comments
Comments are closed.