Life at 50 degree Celsius: How a single man wants to cool down Karachi. BBC Urdu

[Paul2]

Most of Pakistan is extremely dry and agriculture depends on the Indus River irrigation system - in fact Egypt and Pakistan are both gifts of River Nile and River Indus respectively.

There are a lot of places in Argentina, Europe, and elsewhere where they are having 200-300mm rainfall, and having bumper harvests without, or with very little irrigation.

 

[313ghazi]

With most of it coming in winter, and autumn, when nothing is growing. I researched this in my free time, Pakistan is in fact quite a watery place in comparison to many agriculturally well doing countries in the world, especially your traditional agricultural regions along the Indus river.

We don't retain and properly distribute the water. The monsoons just flood urban centres.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

There are a lot of places in Argentina, Europe, and elsewhere where they are having 200-300mm rainfall, and having bumper harvests without, or with very little irrigation.

Which places? Karachi's average annual precipitation is 174 mm. Madrid in Spain which is considered dry by European standards recieves more than double that at 436 mm.

Then there is other factors at play. Much of what preciptation the Indus Valley recieves is in summer and with high temperatures much of this is evapourated. Whereas in Madrid most of the rain is in winter and thus suffers less depletion.

Pakistan erronously is bracketed with South Asia but actually has climate similiar to Middle East. In fact Pakistan forms the eastern flank of the dry Middle Eastern climate.