Chitral is embodied between the gargantuan ranges of Hindukush and HinduRaj, lying in the northwestern corner of Pakistan. According to koppen’s classification of climates, it lies in the humid continental climatic region. The characteristic feature of this type of climate is that it is severely harsh with summer temperature touching 100 mercury in the Fahrenheit’s scale and winters being freezing cold.

 In Chitral, the hottest months are July and August, when the temperature rises to 44 degree Celsius. May and June being Balmy and September and October mild and from November up to March it is harshly cold with the minimum temperature in the month of January. In terms of rainfall Chitral receives 34.5 inches annually. Most of the rainfall comes in the months of winter and spring. Maximum rainfall is received in March, when the Rain gauge is filled up to three inches. Part of the rainfall is in the form of snow. The above statistics depict the averages of too many years and changes are subject to fluctuate over the course of time.

The heavy snowfall of this year is due to the global climatic changes, which is the result of human intervention with nature. Man is as always in fight with his environment. In this fight he has been able to overcome the hurdles put forward by the environment, so creating errors and faults in nature’s engine. This has created a severe problem because it is an intensifying rivalry between the two. The term “Global Warming” is often used without taking into account the history of our planet. Earth has been through periods of glaciation and inter-glaciation in the past. Ten thousand years back, all the parts of the world accept a small belt of equator were under a thick mass of ice. That age is termed as Pleistocene- Age. Kagholasht in Chitral is a best example of the Pleistocene glacial landforms and the undulation of its terrain resembles the glacial moraines all over the world. All of the vale of Chitral would have been in the same situation.   Then we entered into the current age of inter-glaciation, with thawing of ice­­­­­__ that has now retreated to the polar ice caps and high altitudes only.

 According to climatologists, we are at the ends of the warm and balmy period and about to inter into ice age once again. They are of the view that Homo sapiens have perhaps prolonged this Holocene era because of the massive injection of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. So Global Warming is in terms balanced by the engines of environment. Not only the intervention of humans into the atmosphere has created severity in the climate, but also has halted the march towards the ice age once again. So it is in a reconciliation of the environment with humans of a sort.

Salahuddin,

FG College, H-8,