(Dan Tri) – A heat wave swept Southeast Asia this week, causing temperatures to reach 45 degrees Celsius and disrupting people’s lives.
People go to parks in Yangon, Myanmar to avoid the heat (Photo: AFP).
For many people in the city of Yangon (Myanmar), which has about 8 million people, relief comes only at night and in parks with natural shade and gentle breezes.
`My parents cannot stay in the house in the afternoon. They have to go out and sit under the shade of trees,` a Yangon resident told AFP when arriving at Inya Lake on the evening of April 26.
`I feel like this year is much hotter than last year,` the woman added.
Mya Aye, 62, said she goes to the park every day when the power goes out at 5 p.m.
`It’s too hot in the house, children and the elderly can’t stand it,` she said.
One man said he and his family moved from the north of the city because they could not stay indoors due to the heat.
`Even when we sat outside, the sun was very harsh and we couldn’t sit anywhere. After 10 o’clock, it got hotter and we couldn’t stand it,` he said, adding that the elderly were affected.
`Elderly people don’t go out because of the heat but just stay indoors. After sunset, they go out,` he explained.
He also said that frequent power outages only make the situation worse, as houses are left empty every evening.
According to Myanmar’s weather monitoring agency, the temperature on April 25 was 3-4 degrees Celsius higher than the average for April. In Chauk in the Magway region, the temperature reached 45.9 degrees Celsius on April 24.
Scientific research shows that climate change is making heat waves longer, more frequent and more intense.
Global temperatures hit record highs last year and the United Nations World Meteorological Organization said Asia was warming at a particularly rapid rate, with the impact of heatwaves in the region increasing day by day.
Over the past week, a wave of extreme heat has swept across parts of South and Southeast Asia, disrupting people’s lives and posing threats.
Thailand issued a new warning about scorching hot weather on April 25, as the government said heatstroke has killed at least 30 people this year.
The Bangkok city government issued an extreme heat warning when the heat index was expected to rise above 52 degrees Celsius. On April 24, the temperature in Bangkok measured by the weather agency was 40.1 degrees Celsius.
April is usually the hottest time of the year in Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia, but this year’s weather conditions have been exacerbated by the El Nino weather phenomenon.
Meanwhile, the temperature in Luang Prabang city (Laos) recently reached nearly 43 degrees Celsius, an unprecedented high in the history of this area.
Students at about 7,000 schools in the Philippines last week switched to online learning at home because of unusually hot weather in many areas due to the impact of the El Nino weather phenomenon.
In China, hundreds of weather stations recorded the hottest April temperatures on record.
Many other places in Asia such as India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Turkmenistan all recorded record high temperatures in April.
In the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, April 15 became the hottest day in nearly 60 years in this locality.
Olivia 
Jackson