WE surely hope you enjoyed that refreshing burst of cold weather we got in January and February, because it’s over.
While Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said there is no heat wave yet in the country, one doesn’t need to pore through the weather bureau’s records of average everyday temperatures this past week to know that this summer is expected to be scorching.
Just go out for a walk, and you’ll be drenched in sweat in no time. You might even experience nausea and dizzy spells.
The heat index in the National Capital Region had already been measured as high as 38 degrees Celsius last week, and Pagasa said the hot weather can only get hotter in the coming days, with the hottest yet in May.
We expect the Department of Health to come out with advisories soon to warn the public against heat-related illnesses.
In the past years, even the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) had allowed its traffic enforcers and street sweepers to take one-hour breaks in the afternoon during summer to prevent them from suffering heat stroke, which is considered a medical emergency. All those whose jobs entail being outdoors should do the same.
It is not just getting hotter in the Philippines. Climate-change studies have found that global warming has increased heat records everywhere.
A recent story by The Associated Press reported the Earth sizzled to a third straight record-hot year in 2016, according to various international weather groups.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated that the average global temperature for 2016 was 14.84°C, or hotter by 0.04 degrees than 2015.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa) figures are higher, at 0.12°C hotter than 2015.
The British meteorological office, the World Meteorological Organization and other monitoring groups also agreed that 2016 was the hottest, the fifth time in a dozen years that the globe has set a new annual heat record. Records have been set in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010 and 2005.
Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said his calculations show most of the record heat was from heat-trapping gases from the burning of oil, coal and gas. Only about 12 percent was due to El Niño, which is a periodic warming of parts of the Pacific that change weather globally, he said.
“Of course, this is climate change, it’s overwhelmingly climate change,” said Corinne Le Quere, director of England’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
Well, there are more than a few things we could do here in the Philippines to help mitigate both climate change and the hot weather.
We could shed our overreliance on coal, oil and fossil fuels for our energy needs.
The government should also strictly implement the provisions of the Clean Air Act. All the smoke-belching buses, jeepneys, trucks and other vehicles that are still running on our roads, despite clearly failing emission standards, are worsening air pollution, which, in turn, not only makes our cities hotter but more dangerously unhealthy.
Those of us who’ve been stuck together with these smoke-belchers along traffic-clogged roads in Metro Manila and other urban centers know only too well they are causing not only air pollution, but also our early deaths from lung-related illnesses. They should not be allowed on our roads, period! Air pollution costs P130 billion per year, according to a World Bank report, and 80 percent of air pollution is from traffic.
Another thing we could do is to stop cutting trees. Trees improve air quality by absorbing pollution and greenhouse gases, and also help beautify and cool our cities.
We should also have more parks, gardens and recreational spaces in our cities. We need greener infrastructure, and more oases to cool hot and tired pedestrians and commuters.
Metro Manila, for instance, has very little green cover left—only about 13 percent, according to the MMDA. It is one of the lowest-ranked cities in the Asian Green City Index, a measurement of the environmental performance of 22 urban cities across the region by the Economic Intelligence Unit.
No wonder it’s hot here!