Extreme heat has battered Asia from India to the Philippines in recent weeks, causing deaths from heat stroke, school closures and desperate prayers for cooling rain.
Scientists have long warned that human-induced climate change will cause more frequent, longer and more intense heatwaves.
According to data released by the National Hydrometeorological Forecast Center on Friday, Vietnam experienced three waves of high temperatures in April, with the mercury reaching 44 degrees Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit) in two cities initially of the week.
This result is barely barely lower than the best temperature ever recorded in Vietnam – 44.2°C on May 7 last 12 months.
A complete of 102 weather stations recorded record highs in April as northern and central Vietnam suffered the worst heatwave, with temperatures averaging 2-4°C higher than the identical period last 12 months.
On Tuesday, seven stations recorded temperatures above 43 degrees Celsius.
The most dramatic sign of maximum weather to hit Vietnam occurred within the southern province of Dong Nai, where lots of of hundreds of fish died in a reservoir.
Photos show residents wading and boating within the 300-hectare (741-acre) Song May Reservoir, with the water barely visible beneath a layer of dead fish.
Water shortages brought on by a heat wave and poor management were blamed for the mass die-off.
The Vietnamese weather agency predicts that there will probably be more heat in May, with temperatures 1.5 to 2.5 degrees higher than in previous years.
Although April and May are often the most popular seasons in Southeast Asia, experts say the El Nino effect is making this 12 months’s heat especially intense.
April heat records were broken in Bangladesh and Myanmar, at the very least 30 people have died of warmth stroke in Thailand because the starting of the 12 months, and high temperatures were partly blamed for a deadly explosion at an ammunition dump in Cambodia.
Roman Catholic bishops within the Philippines are urging believers to hope for rain and cooler temperatures after the warmth forced the federal government to shut tens of hundreds of colleges.
The Indian megacity of Kolkata has been fighting brutal heat, with the best temperature reaching 43°C on the town’s hottest April day since 1954.
Even mountainous Nepal has been affected, with the federal government issuing health warnings last week and firefighters battling extremely severe fires.
