Iranians asked to limit water use as temperatures hit 50C and reservoirs are depleted | Iran

Iranian authorities have asked people to limit water consumption in the middle of serious waves of heat and a water crisis across the country.

Iran knows its hottest week of the year, according to the National Meteorological Service, with temperatures exceeding 50 ° C in certain regions.

At the top of extreme heat, the country is in a serious water crisis. Iran has been drought for five years, precipitation is even lower this year. The Minister of Energy, Abbas Aliabadi, announced last week that negotiations to import water was underway with Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan.

The country has hundreds of dams, built from the 1950s, but drought considerably reduced their production. This, as well as infrastructure problems and heat waves, led to power cuts across the country.

An Iranian government spokesman Fatemeh Mohajerani, announced during the weekend that this Wednesday had been made a public holiday in the capital region due to the waves of sustainable heat.

“In light of continuous extreme heat and the need to keep water and electricity on Wednesday … was declared holidays in the province of Tehran,” she wrote on X.

Hussain Hassan *, at the end of the 1950s, said that it was so hot in Tehran and that the sun is so fierce that it feels unable to walk in the direct sunlight. He said, “I think the skin will burn. [My] The shirt is wet so quickly and I prefer to take a shower twice a day at this age in the middle of severe heat. Thank God, there is no water crisis where I live. »»

He added that in certain parts of Tehran, the authorities had reduced the water supply to manage the crisis. “I have heard that people who cut water supply have led to durable strengths of water at least 12 hours and more,” he said.

According to the climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, the southwest city of the Iranian city of Shabankareh recorded temperatures of 52.8 ° C during the weekend, potentially the hottest temperature of the year so far (a reading of 53 ° C in Kuwait has not been confirmed). Metdesk meteorologists in the United Kingdom reported a temperature reading of 51.6c in the southwest border town of Abadan on July 17, and 50.3c were recorded on Monday in Ahwaz nearby.

The city of Tehran reported 40c on Sunday at 41c on Monday. Hassan said: “He feels more than 45 degrees Celsius. It is so hot.”

For Hassan, the greatest concern is the brewing water crisis while the tanks exhaust and the Karaj dam, which provides water to the province of Tehran, has reached its lowest level.

The climate breakdown by humans makes each heat wave in the world more intense and more likely to occur. Some, such as the extreme heat wave in western Canada and the United States in 2021, would have been almost impossible without global heating.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian issued a striking warning at a meeting of the cabinet on Sunday. “The water crisis is more serious than what is discussed today, and if we do not take urgent measures now, we will face a situation in the future for which no remedy can be found,” said Pezeshkian, according to the state media. “In the water sector, beyond management and planning, we must also approach excessive consumption.”

Hassan’s words were taken up by others in Iran. Ehsan Ali *, 35, who lives in Mashhad, said that people were very worried about power outages and that hot weather had become unbearable. Ali said the water crisis had been exacerbated in his city by a dam built upstream by Afghanistan in the province of Herat. The structure was criticized by the Iranians who believe that he is choking on the water flow in Mashhad.

“We have nine hours a day because the temperature has climbed across Iran, including my hometown,” Ali told the Guardian. “The water crisis is one of the biggest problems. Our dams become dry and the water tanks are exhausted so quickly. ”

* The names have been modified.