On a sweltering hot day in April, Cairo meteorologist Amira Nasser points to a written chronicle of Egyptian weather in the 19th century.
The temperature outside is 41 degrees Celsius, or 46 degrees Celsius in the sun – hot enough to drain the battery of Nasser’s phone.
Inside, the Museum of Meteorology records include a page from April 1874, when the temperature in Cairo was 24 degrees Celsius.
“It’s only April and we’re already experiencing heat waves,” she says. “This was unheard of decades ago.”
While the planet has now seen 12 straight months of record-breaking heat, global warming is a particularly serious problem for Egypt, a desert country that is warming at one of the fastest rates in the world.
Experts from Egypt’s Meteorological Authority fear this summer will be even more brutal than last year, upending resources and agriculture while wreaking havoc on daily life.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s government – which recently secured a $57 billion rescue package – is already being forced to import the largest imports of liquefied natural gas since 2018 to keep up with the humming air conditioners.
Declining wheat crop yields due to heat and water shortages have led to increased dependence on imports of a grain essential for feeding Egypt’s population.
Meanwhile, constant power outages are taking a sharp hit on productivity.
Laptops die during Zoom meetings.
When budget cuts are announced in advance, office-goers rush home early to avoid getting stuck in elevators — which local media say has caused at least a handful of fatal accidents as people tried to escape during sudden power outages.
As a bellwether for the effects of climate change, Egypt offers a glimpse of what awaits global economies next summer, as well as the future.
Dubai has already experienced the consequences of extreme weather after heavy rains flooded houses and roads for days.
The Indian technology capital Bangalore is struggling with water shortages. And when the warm weather arrives in Europe and America, other countries will feel their own pain.
A man carries a new fan during high temperatures in Cairo’s Attaba district. | Bloomberg
Nasser – who completed her Ph.D. about heat waves – fears other possible consequences in Egypt.
“One of the concerns that we’re dealing with is that we’re starting to have a category of deaths that is heat mortality,” she said. “Temperatures have never reached 50 degrees Celsius, and we are not there yet, but we need to be prepared and have contingency plans like we have for flooding.”
Egypt’s suffering is particularly acute because of its geographic makeup as a desert country with limited water resources.
That causes the Earth to warm twice as fast as the rest of the planet, demonstrating the impact of extreme heat and highlighting the importance of accurately predicting extreme weather events for policymakers and businesses.
Economists and climate specialists are already predicting severe heat in many parts of the world this summer.
In particular, large parts of the North Atlantic Ocean are still well above usual temperatures, which will likely lead to continued warm weather in Europe.
This means a rising demand for energy for cooling and an increased threat of forest fires in Greece, Spain and the French Riviera.
Heavier summer rains could bring the risk of flash flooding and agricultural disruption.
Then there is the human toll.
Unlit street lights on the highway in Cairo | Bloomberg
“We have seen heat-related mortality increase by 30% in Europe over the past two decades, affecting the vast majority of European territory,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Center for Climate Change. Medium-term weather forecasts.
Both Morocco and Mexico are experiencing drought, while California and the southwestern US are experiencing heat waves.
More people have already died from the heat in Thailand this year than in all of 2023. In the US, experts predict a very active tropical cyclone season.
In Egypt, another summer of mass outages would increase pressure on the state budget and on a population already struggling with high inflation, a devalued currency and rising domestic fuel prices.
The country has only recently secured the bailout in the form of investments and aid packages.
Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said state subsidies on fuel amounted to 220 billion Egyptian pounds ($4.6 billion) in the current fiscal year, and ending the blackout would require an additional $300 million a month to import enough energy.
An orange juice seller during high temperatures in Cairo. The orange crop was almost destroyed last year. | Bloomberg
Climate officials fear that some of this year’s harvests in Egypt could be severely affected.
The orange harvest was almost lost last year and growers could not export much. According to the Met, the mango harvest is also estimated to have fallen by 14.6% to 50.5% last year, while the maize harvest in southern Egypt also fell by 30% to 40%.
Holiday areas have also been affected.
Aswan, a city of majestic pharaonic ruins and temples, one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations and the inspiration for Agatha Christie’s famous ‘Death on the Nile’, recorded its hottest ever temperature on June 6 at 49.6 degrees Celsius in the shadow.
The country has one of the world’s oldest traditions of temperature monitoring.
In 1829 I began measuring the temperature five times a day, along with the five times of prayer in one room of the School of Engineers.
The Met department museum displays weather measuring instruments used by the ancient Egyptians.
Today, the meteorologists are in constant contact with ministries from aviation and agriculture to navigation and energy.
They provide forecasts essential for everything from city planning to imports, seeking to mitigate the impact of the extreme weather that damaged Egypt’s crucial wheat crop in 2010, caused dozens of heat-related deaths five years later, and in 2018 flooded homes and power went out. roads in one of Cairo’s most prestigious suburbs.
A worker at a gas station in Cairo | Bloomberg
Now many Egyptians organize their daily lives entirely according to the agency’s predictions.
In Cairo, Salwa Abdel-Azim, 49, has no air conditioning.
So she constantly monitors the Met’s Facebook page to account for heat waves, stores water in jerry cans to use for drinking and cools her head and the back of her neck when the power goes out.
Her family tries to get everything done before the electricity goes out, finishing their studies, doing household chores and charging the LED flashlight.
She has to cook very early in the morning before going to work.
“The only thing I’m looking forward to now is the time between heat waves,” she said.
Climate change has made many cities around the world dangerously hot due to the ‘urban heat island effect’ caused by buildings and dense development trapping the heat.
It is especially a problem for cities like the Greater Cairo region, which has more than 20 million inhabitants.
“My house faces south, so it gets very hot,” says Sondos Ibrahim, a freelance graphic designer in Cairo. “So I rush to a cafe in a shopping center where I know there’s no power outage, or I go to WFM – also called Working From Mom’s – if it has electricity. But it’s a struggle to keep my business going. ”
