April 11 had an unusually hot morning indicative of the day’s condition. Fiery sun, sizzling wind and showers of flames outside home turned the overcrowded roads, busy bazars desolate and deserted.
It seemed to feel the metabolic chaos, what the people expressed in fear and apprehension. As the day advanced, the temperature went on sharply rising and cracked a new record of 45.80 Celsius at noon. The day ended with an agonising experience as if it were a hot bowel cooling slowly in the shades of night.
A report prepared by El Dorado weather worldwide on that particular day listed Bhubaneswar on the horrible top. The record breaking temperature of 45.80 C was found to be the highest across the earth.
Gone are those days when Bhubaneswar was enchanting the agglomeration of settlement by its beautiful climatic condition, suitable terrain, plenty water bodies, tight vegetations and open-unbarriered spaces. Perennial Kuakhai-Daya, spilled over canals-nallas, nasal congesting summer cool air, traffic less roads are nightmare now for Bhubaneswar. Quite a long journey of metamorphosis has taken place from temple city to capital city and now to Smart City.
Carpeted surface by concrete jungle, hiding soils to obstacle the groundwater recharge, vanishing peripheral agricultural lands, levelling of surface water bodies, oversized vehicular traffic, electronically attributed lifestyle etc are key performing parameters in rising the Bhubaneswar temperature by 40-60 C more from the surrounding locale.
CO2 level in the city atmosphere remains high due to declining vegetation and vehicular extrusions mainly. The stretched out dry and sandy riverbeds reflect radiation during day time. Opening of rocky hills and mounts on excavation for building stones in the city outskirt contributes the radiation. Bared sewerage system and open dump yards inside and outside of the city outpours methane as prominent GHG to increase the local temperature. Machine operated construction works in large scale and open transportation of building materials like sand, soil etc produces dust particle in local atmosphere to adhere temperature. Blowing wind, the only heat dissipating and downing agent has been hindered by high rise and over dense buildings. It is therefore obvious to have the locally contributed temperature arrested in city domain to add onto the day temperature to make it fuming.
(Dr Beura is from the PG Department of Geology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, E-Mail: debanandabeura@rediffmail.com, Ph: 9861213472)