However, the rise in temperature during the third month of the year isn’t unusual, said Mani Ratna Shakya, deputy director general of the Meteorological Forecasting Division under the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology.
“The temperature [this week] has beaten the record but the average temperature in March has not been affected,” Shakya said.
March is usually the time when temperature starts rising as winter comes to an end, he said. This is because the sun shifts into the northern hemisphere and as it gets closer to the regions, temperature gets warmer.
Shakya also pointed that it is necessary for temperature to rise because it helps to generate rain.
“Warming is very essential for the beginning of the monsoon,” Shakya said. “This could be a good indicator for the monsoon.”
However, people working for environmental issues dispute.
Raj Kumar Thapa, managing director of Solar Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which promotes the use of alternative energy, blames it on the increasing and mismanaged urbanization, population growth and the greenhouse gas emission.
“Having lived here [Kathmandu] for 40 years, I am seeing a big change in temperature,” Thapa commented. And he added, “This is a manifestation of global warming.”
And while people are complaining about the summer heat in Kathmandu, it’s no relief in other parts of the country, either.
In places like Nepalgunj and Bhairahawa, the temperature has hovered around the 40-degree mark. And in neighboring India, Delhi recorded a high of 38.6 degrees Celsius on March 22, which is seven degrees above normal, according to reports.
As per a statement published by the British Met Office, 2010 could be the warmest year recorded. The report cited the moderate warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean known as El Nino and various man-made conditions, including the greenhouse gas emission, could contribute in surging the mercury this year. It also mentions that the mean average temperature between 1961 and 1990 was 14 degrees Celsius, and that its forecast for 2010 was 14.58 degrees centigrade, which would make it the hottest year so far.
In Kathmandu, the highest temperature recorded was 36.6 degrees Celsius in 1989. And according to the Climatological Records of Nepal published by the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, the average temperature for March in Kathmandu has been on a rise—25.8 degrees Celsius in 2005, 26.3 degrees in 2006 and 24.7 degrees in 2007. The record for 2008 was unavailable at the department due to computer malfunction.
But Shakya said the temperature now, which has hovered in the 30s since March 19, isn’t an indicator for an extreme rise in temperature in future.
“Because it’s high in March, this doesn’t mean that the temperature will increase by three to four degrees in the coming days.”
But for others, the rising temperature is an indication of the rapid change in environment and its degradation.
“This is a sign of some bigger disaster to come in the future,” Thapa said.
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