Nearly 40 monkeys that were desperately searching for water during a devastating heat wave drowned in a well in India, AFP reported.
What's happening?
According to forest officials, northern India has been hit by an intense heat wave over the past month, with temperatures rising over 113 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, the lakes have dried up, leaving local wildlife desperate for water.
In the Palamu district of eastern Jharkhand state, a troop of monkeys jumped into a well and could not get out. "A team of forest officials are investigating," Kumar Ashish, the local government forest officer, told AFP, as shared by SW Iowa News.
Hundreds of people have also died due to the heat wave over the last month.
Why are heat waves like this concerning?
Heatwaves in India are becoming more frequent, lasting longer, and getting hotter, according to a study published in the science journal Nature — all thanks to the changes to our planet's weather pattern that have been driven by the heat-trapping air pollution that largely comes from dirty energy sources like gas, oil, and coal.
Another study, published by the UK government's Meteorological Office, said that climate change has made heat waves in India and Pakistan 100 times more likely to occur, taking the probability from once every 312 years to once every 3.1 years. The study concluded that by the end of the century, that number will increase to once over 1.15 years, making an area where over 1 billion live increasingly uninhabitable.
What's being done about the heat wave?
An Indian court recently urged the government to declare a national emergency over the heat wave, and in some areas, officials have been forced to truck in water in tankers and set up public distribution points.
In a broader sense, in order to stop crises like this one from getting worse and more frequent, we must end the overheating of our planet by abandoning dirty energy sources like gas, oil, and coal and turning instead to clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
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