Claims of Lahore and Faisalabad en route to rank among world's hottest cities by 2050 are misleading

Since June 7, 2026, several local digital media pages on X, Facebook and Instagram have been claiming that Lahore and Faisalabad were en route to rank among the world’s hottest cities by 2050. However, the claim is misleading. On June 7, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) released an advisory, warning that a heatwave would engulf the country until June 12, with temperatures rising by seven degrees Celsius above normal. It predicted that a high-pressure system was likely to develop and persist in the upper atmosphere. The PMD warned that night-time temperatures were also likely to rise, while dust storms may occur at isolated pla­ces in southern Punjab and Sindh. The department further advised that children, women and senior citizens should exercise extra caution during the heatwave. Since June 7, several local digital media pages have been claiming that Lahore and Faisalabad were projected to rank among the world’s hottest cities by 2050. The posts were accompanied by AI-generated imagery showing the mercury rising to alarming levels, as seen here, here, here, here and here. Similar news reports were also run by local news outlets Bol News, Dunya, The Nation and ProPakistani on their websites. All of these social media posts and news reports cited a “climate study” but did not provide its name, the date it was published, or a link to the same. A keyword search conducted to corroborate whether any credible domestic or international media outlets had reported the alleged development did not yield any results. Similarly, a keyword search for the original study cited in the aforementioned reports did not yield any peer-reviewed paper or institutional report. Instead, the search results led to a March 2026 study by the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab — covered by Dawn — which projected that Pakistan could see a net increase of 51 temperature-related deaths per 100,000 people by 2050. It further stated that Faisalabad, Lahore, Multan, Gujranwala, Pesh