Living with the Climate
Complete Notes & Free Quiz

The world’s largest cities are built on coasts because coasts offer a myriad of job opportunities, natural resources and ports for trade. Big cities built around ports include New York, Boston, Shanghai, Mumbai and Karachi. Coastal population density was expected to rise 35% by 2025 (vs 1995).

The key activities of coastal people are fish farming and trade, together called the Blue Economy. They benefit from natural breeding grounds for fish such as mangroves and the coral reef, and people also visit the beach for recreation.

The Indus plains are depositional (flood) plains, formed with the silt the river deposits during floods. This gives Punjab and Sindh fertile soil, so most people there practise agriculture. The buffalo is the main resource of food, clothing and shelter.

Most people on plains are involved in agriculture and ranching (raising livestock on cleared grasslands). Tropical grasslands are found on the plains of Africa and Australia, and the grasslands of North America have been substantially cleared for farming.

The deserts east of the Indus in the lower Indus Plains are inhabited by Rajput, Baloch and Dravidian people. Their houses are mostly made of unbaked bricks and wood, and straw huts are a common sight.

Thar life is based on the joint family system. Men plough the fields, graze animals, weave and build houses. Women bring water from the well or pond, cook, wash, maintain the house, and do thread-making, embroidering and knitting.

Polar regions have extremely harsh weather, long winter nights and long summer days. Millions live in the Arctic, but Antarctica has no permanent inhabitants — only researchers. People wear six to seven layers of clothing, keep toes and fingers warm to avoid cold injury, travel by aircraft or sledge, and eat dried food to save fuel.

Dudinka (on the Yenisei River, Siberia) has only 20,000 people and a January minimum near −33°C. Harbin in NE China — capital of Heilongjiang, 10 million people — is the “ice city” and hosts the Harbin International Snow and Ice Festival.

The tropics lie at the centre of the Earth, are warm all year (25–28°C), have two seasons (wet and dry) and hold about one third of the world’s people. The Amazon Basin (≈5 million km², nine countries) is home to the Kayapo tribe, who practise slash-and-burn (shifting) agriculture growing bananas, manioc and rice.

Extreme weather events are unusual, unexpected, severe or unseasonal occurrences — cyclones, heat waves, cold waves, thunderstorms, wildfires and dust storms. They cause health problems, loss of life, economic costs, droughts, floods, landslides and ecosystem changes. Each lightning bolt can carry up to one billion volts.

Blizzard: heavy snow, cold temperatures, strong wind. Dust storm: wind, clouds, arid conditions. Ice storm: freezing rain, ice, cold temperatures. Thunderstorm: thunder, lightning, heavy rain.

Weather is made of air, water and heat. Since industrialisation in the 1800s, burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases that trap heat, raising Earth’s overall temperature — global warming. This drives climate change: stronger storms, bigger cyclones, and atmospheric rivers that carry moisture up to 2,000 km. Rain is “violent” above 5 cm/hour.

Global warming affects biodiversity from Arctic polar bears to African marine turtles. The WWF Living Planet Report 2022 found the world lost 69% of wildlife in under 50 years — a believed sixth mass extinction. The impact is most daunting in the Hindu Kush–Himalaya region (Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, India).

Pakistan has more than 7,200 glaciers (the most outside the poles), now melting faster — causing more, and more severe, floods. The Indus empties into the Arabian Sea; cholera can spread in floods. Crop failure brings food scarcity, poverty and urbanisation, and rising seas erode the Indus Delta and raise salinity.

Individuals can save energy (LED bulbs, cold-water wash, switch off lights), use public transport, cycle or walk, save food (rotting food makes methane), apply the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and use renewable energy like solar and wind.

Nations must cut fossil fuels, tax polluters, subsidise clean energy, decarbonise (reduce CO₂ and methane), retrofit buildings and invest in green research. Internationally, the Paris Agreement (December 2015), the first climate treaty, set a target to reduce the world’s average temperature by two degrees.