Heat wave caught Southeast Asia off guard

Vietnamese commuters crisscross the crowded city of Hanoi every day on their way to work on innumerable mopeds or motorbike taxis, dropping off everything from packages to prepared meals and clients.

Phong, 42, is one of them; he starts work at 5:00 am to avoid rush hour and travels for almost 12 hours every day with little time off.

But over the past two months, an intense heat wave that has enveloped his country has made Phong's job much more challenging. Wearing a cap, wet handkerchiefs, and multiple water bottles, he braced himself against the day's heat, but it proved ineffective when the temperature rose above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).The average May temperature in Hanoi is 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).

"On the off chance that I get a heatstroke, I would be compelled to suspend heading to recuperate," he told CNN. "Yet, I can't manage the cost of it."

Phong, who declined to give his last name, guaranteed that notwithstanding his bicycle, the fundamental device he utilizes while filling in as a driver for the ride-hailing administration Get is a little umbrella to safeguard his telephone. He would miss out on truly necessary pay assuming the telephone broke. He said, "I was apprehensive the battery would overheat whenever it was presented to the sun.

Dinh Van Hung, a 53-year-old disinfection specialist close by in similar city, works the entire day getting rubbish from the bustling roads of the Dong Da locale of focal Hanoi.

"It is difficult to keep away from the intensity, particularly around early afternoon and early evening," Dinh told CNN. "Outrageous temperatures additionally make the trash smell more unsavory, the difficult work is presently significantly more troublesome, straightforwardly influencing my wellbeing and work."

Dinh says "there could be no alternate way" however to change when he starts and completes his work day.

"I attempt to work promptly in the first part of the day or evening and night," he said. "During mid-day break when the temperature is excessively high, I track down a walkway in a little rear entryway, spread out the cardboard sheets to rest for some time and afterward continue work in the early evening."

Phong and Dinh are two of the a huge number of drivers, road sellers, cleaners, development laborers, ranchers, and other open air or casual economy laborers all through Southeast Asia who experienced the most during what specialists depicted as the "cruelest intensity wave on record".

They are the foundation of numerous social orders, however they experience the ill effects of outrageous weather patterns, with perilously high temperatures adversely affecting both their wellbeing and the problematic idea of their positions.

In Southeast Asia, April and May are typically the hottest months of the year due to the climb in temperatures before storm downpours give some help. Nonetheless, they arrived at up 'til now unbelievable levels this year in most of the area's countries, including vacationer areas of interest Thailand and Vietnam.

Thailand saw its most smoking day in history at 45.4 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit) on April 15, while adjoining Laos finished out at 43.5 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) for two continuous days in May, and Vietnam's everything time record was broken toward the beginning of May with 44.2 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit), as per examination of weather conditions stations information by a climatologist and climate student of history Maximiliano Herrera.

Herrera depicted it as "the most merciless endless intensity wave" that has gone on into June. On June 1, Vietnam broke the record for its most sizzling June day in history with 43.8 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) - - with 29 days of the month to go.

In a new report from the World Climate Attribution (WWA), a global alliance of researchers said the April heat wave in Southeast Asia was a once-in-200-years occasion that would have been "practically unthinkable" without human-caused environmental change.

HUMID HEAT CAUSES EXTREME DISTRESS AND CLIMATE CHANGE CAN MAKE IT WORSE

Extreme temperatures combined with humidity makes it even more difficult for your body to attempt to cool down.

Heat-related illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke, can be fatal and have severe symptoms, especially for pregnant women, people with heart disease, kidney issues, and diabetes.

"When the surrounding humidity is very high, the body will continue to sweat trying to release moisture to cool itself, but because the sweat is not evaporating it will eventually lead to severe dehydration, and in acute cases it can lead to heat strokes and deaths," said Mariam Zachariah, research associate in near-real time attribution of extreme events to climate change at World Weather Attribution initiative at Imperial College London. 

"Which is why a humid heat wave is more dangerous than a dry heat wave," she told CNN.

To understand the health risks of humid heat, scientists often calculate the "feels-like" temperature -- a single measure of how hot it feels to the human body when air temperature and humidity are both taken into account, sometimes alongside other factors such as wind chill.

Perceived heat is usually several degrees higher than observed temperature and gives a more accurate reading of how heat affects people.

CNN analysis of Copernicus Climate Change Service data found that between early April and late May, all six countries in the continental portion of Southeast Asia had reached perceived temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) or more every single day. This is above a threshold considered dangerous, especially for people with health problems or those not used to extreme heat.

In Thailand, 20 days in April and at least 10 days in May reached feels-like temperatures above 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit). At this level, thermal heat stress becomes "extreme" and is considered life threatening for anybody including healthy people used to extreme humid heat.

Throughout April and May, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia all had several days with potential to cause extreme heat stress. Myanmar had 12 such days -- until Cyclone Mocha brought relative relief, but severe devastation, when it made landfall on May 14.

The April-May heat wave in Southeast Asia caused widespread hospitalizations, damaged roads, sparked fires and led to school closures, however the number of deaths remains unknown, according to the World Weather Attribution report.

The study found that, because of climate change, the heat was more than two degrees hotter in perceived temperature than it could have been without global warming caused by pollution.

"When the atmosphere becomes warmer, its ability to hold the moisture becomes higher and therefore the chances of humid heat waves also increase," Zachariah, one of the authors, told CNN.

If global warming continues to increase to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), such humid heat waves could occur ten times more often, according to the study. 

And if emissions continue to increase at the same pace, the next two decades could already see 30 more deaths per million from heat in Thailand, and 130 more deaths per million by the end of the century, according to the UN's Human Climate Horizons projections.

For Myanmar that number would be 30 and 520 more deaths per million respectively, for Cambodia -- 40 and 270, data shows.