Islamabad, 30 April 2022 (dpa/MIA) – Pakistani authorities have put rescue services on high alert after warnings of flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF) in the country’s northern areas, as temperatures are soaring to dangerously high levels. “The provincial government has alerted the disaster management authority and the vulnerable communities,” Shahzad Shigri, environment protection chief of Gilgit-Baltistan province, told dpa on Saturday. Glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountain ranges — the Hindu Kush, Himalayas and Karakorum — are melting fast due to rising temperatures that created more than 3,000 glacial lakes in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Shigri said that the GLOF are sudden events and have very little response time that results in loss of lives, property and livelihoods in the remote communities. According to an estimate, more than 7.1 million people are vulnerable to the GLOF. “Pakistan is in the throes of a devastating heatwave which has unpredictably hit much earlier this year,” former climate change minister Malik Amin Aslam told dpa. Aslam said Dadu, a city in the southern province of Sindh, was the “hottest place on earth in April,” during what should have been the spring season. Climate change minister Sherry Rehman said that the rainfall this year had been 62% less than the previous years. According to the meteorological office, the week-long heatwave that started on April 27, will gradually subside by May 2 and be replaced by a westerly wave. In 2015, more than 2,000 people died in Karachi when a heatwave hit the city during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when people fast from dawn to dusk. Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of global carbon emissions, but is among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable nations.