Latest news with #Celsius
Hindustan Times
43 minutes ago
- Climate
- Hindustan Times
After weeks of high temps, heatwave, mercury falls below normal in Kashmir
After weeks, the day temperatures in Kashmir valley dropped below normal on Friday following overnight rains and gusty winds. The maximum temperatures which were running above normal for the past many weeks, particularly since May 18, when the valley witnessed heatwave-like conditions, fell 3 to 6 degrees below normal. The summer capital Srinagar, which experienced mild showers during the day as well, recorded a maximum of 22.4 degree celsius on Friday, down from 28.2 degree celsius on Thursday. The city recorded 15.4 mm of rain on Thursday and Friday. Owing to the heatwave-like conditions across Kashmir since May 18, the temperatures were hovering 6-8 degrees above normal. On May 22, according to MeT, Srinagar had recorded the third highest maximum temperature of 34.4°C after the second highest of 35°C on May 31, 1956. However temperatures started coming down in the past few days more particularly after intense rains and hailstorms across the valley on Tuesday. There were rains on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday and also mild showers at scattered places on Friday. The gateway into Kashmir, Qazigund recorded at maximum of 22.3 degree celsius while the tourist resort of Pahalgam witnessed a high of 20.0 degree celsius. At both the places, the mercury fell 2.6 to 2.8 notches below normal. In North Kashmir, Kupwara recorded a maximum of 20 degree Celsius as against the normal of 26.5 degree Celsius. In the tourist resort of Gulmarg, which remains snow covered in winter, witnessed a highest of 12.2 degree Celsius, some 4.6 notches below normal. Meanwhile, the meteorological centre in Srinagar reiterated its prediction of stormy weather for next couple of days. 'On May 30 and 31, the weather is expected to be generally cloudy with possibility of spell of light to moderate rain/thundershowers at most places with heavy rain accompanied with intense showers and gusty winds at few places,' MeT director Mukhtar Ahmad said. He predicted about possibility of landslides and mudslides at few vulnerable places. 'Intense showers may generate flash floods at isolated places,' he said. He said that June 1 and 2 will witness brief spells of light rain and thundershowers at isolated places. 'June 4-6 will be generally dry with brief spells of rain/showers towards late afternoon at isolated places,' he said.
Mint
an hour ago
- Climate
- Mint
The world has already breached a dangerous level of warming, and India isn't prepared
NEW DELHI : Climate Change & You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your inbox. Dear reader, As I was writing this newsletter, Mumbai was drowning in record rains. The monsoon set in 8 days early this year, and according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), it is so early that it has already touched Mumbai. In fact, this year the monsoon came to Mumbai two weeks early, within 24 hours of its onset in Kerala. Mumbai certainly wasn't ready for it. In fact, by the morning of 26 May, one of the city's main stations in Colaba registered a record-breaking amount of rainfall—at 295mm—for the month of May. The previous record was set in 1918 – 107 years ago. We will soon know if climate change played a role in both the early onset of monsoon, as well as the rainfall in Mumbai. But what is already clear is that with rising atmospheric heat, monsoon rains will be more erratic and heavier as the years go by, simply because hotter air can hold more moisture, resulting in cloudbursts like the one in Mumbai on Sunday night. Speaking of climate anomalies, April 2025 was the second hottest April on record, after 2024. According to EU's climate monitoring service Copernicus, the global average temperature in April was 1.51 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels. This made April the 21st straight month that was 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times, prompting some scientists to wonder if the world has already crossed the safety limit of 1.5 degrees of warming on a permanent basis. In fact, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization states that, by 2030, the world might experience at least one year that is 2 degrees hotter. If this is true, then this spells very bad news for the planet, as we will see below. STATE OF THE CLIMATE India's unbearable heat is rising The biggest climate threat in India continues to be heat, and the heat risk is rising. According to a recent study by the New Delhi-based climate policy thinktank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), 57% of India's districts are facing high to very high heat hazards. And 76% of India's population lives in these districts. The risk assessment study is based on 34 separate heat indicators from 734 districts across the country. It found that 417 districts are in the high risk zone, while another 201 faced moderate heat hazards. The top ten heat prone states and union territories include Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and Uttar Pradesh. Also Read: Remembering the Climate Pope The report, titled How Extreme Heat Is Impacting India, highlighted two important dimensions of rising heat—an increase in very warm nights, and a rise in humid heat. Both of these factors amplify the effect of heat on the human body, and can lead to deadly overheating. According to the study, nearly 70% of the districts recorded an increase of over five extra warm nights per year between 2012 and 2022, as compared with 1982-2011. This is especially true of cities, where the heat island effect caused by highly built-up environments has been boosting warmer nights. For example, Mumbai recorded 15 additional 'very warm' summer nights in the past decade compared with the previous three decades. It is a similar situation for other cities like Jaipur and Chennai. With a 10% rise in relative humidity in north India, drier cities like New Delhi are seeing more humid heat, and high humidity plus heat is a deadly combination for the human body. THE NEWS IN BRIEF -In an incisive and well-researched article,LA Timesclimate reporter Sammy Roth lays out how Warren Buffet's investments for Berkshire have always skewed towards fossil fuels, helping drive planet-heating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. -All eyes are on Brazil, as the country gears up to host a pivotal global climate conference this November. In this interview with Hindustan Times, COP30 president designate André Aranha Correa do Lago lays out his priorities for the summit. -In this opinion piece, noted climate skeptic and contrarian Bjorn Lomberg questions if renewable energy really is cheaper than fossil fuels. CLIMATE CHANGE TRACKER Sea-level rise threatening India's coasts I started this newsletter by noting that the world has already experienced 21 consecutive months of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating. Over the past decade, the average heating was of 1.2 degrees, but it seems like we are steadily moving into a much hotter world, sooner than many had predicted. In fact, it is clear that the goal to keep warming to under 1.5 degrees by 2100 is already unreachable, with many climate scientists predicting a catastrophic rise of 2.5-3 degrees of heat this century. This will have serious consequences. According to a major climate science study published earlier in May, sea-level rise may become unstoppable once the world hits 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming permanently. The study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, states that even at current levels of heating, the global sea-level is set to rise by 1cm a year by 2100. Given that we are on course to nearly 3 degrees of heating, this would be devastating for the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, leading to their collapse and a sea level rise of 12m. To put that into perspective, about 230 million people around the world's coastal areas live 1m above the current sea level, while 1 billion people live within 10m above sea level. In India, at least 63 million people (6% of the total population) live within 10m of seacoasts, the second highest in the world after China. For India, this number is projected to grow to 216 million people (10.3% of the total population) by 2060. With sea-level rise a given, there's an urgent need to adapt to this new reality. Which leads us to the next section. KNOW YOUR JARGON Climate Migration With India facing multiple climate threats, the one major change that will be triggered by rising climate hazards is migration. Whether it is sea-level rise, or other impacts like water stress, low crop yields, ecosystem loss and droughts, more and more Indians—mostly the poorest—will be forced to become climate refugees in their own country. According to a 2020 report by Climate Action Network South Asia, about 14 million Indians were forced to migrate due to climate change the absence of drastic climate mitigation measures, the report forecasts over 45 million migrants by 2050. This is a reality that India urgently needs to plan for. Also Read: A deep dive into India's climate crisis Among the many measures that experts urge countries to make is to enhance resilience among vulnerable communities, ensure just transition for agriculture workers, provide universal access to social protection measures, guarantee decent work by creating job opportunities and have a plan for safe, orderly and dignified movement during forced migrations. This will require a combination of international finance access, and generating local finances by progressive taxation of fossil fuel companies, and even international cooperation with our neighbouring countries. India is badly lagging in all of these areas, though some initial measures have been taken. Last year, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) set up a three-year project to increase resilience measures for climate vulnerable communities in Odisha and Telangana. This programme offers alternatives to migration, though it is also mandated to provide information for safe migration. But there is no actual policy addressing migration, apart from a private member's bill on climate migrants' protection and rehabilitation from an Assam Congress MP, which has been gathering dust since 2022. PRIME NUMBER 6.7 In 2024, the world lost 6.7 million hectares of primary forests, according to new data from the University of Maryland's GLAD Lab. The data, hosted on the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch platform, shows that this is nearly twice as much forest loss as in 2023. To put it another way, in 2024, the world lost forests at the rate of 18 football fields every minute. The data also revealed a disturbing new trend—loss due to fires. In 2024, nearly half the forest loss was due to fires, a huge jump from previous years, when agriculture was the primary driver of these losses. These fires emitted 4.1 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, four times more than emissions from all air travel in 2023. The loss of forest cover is a major driver of climate change, as without humid primary forests, land on the planet loses its capacity to store carbon. Forests are the most effective carbon capture and storage tech we know of. Between 2002 and 2024, the world lost 83 million hectares of primary forests, or 8.1% of forest cover. According to the Global Forest Watch data, India has lost 348 kilohectares (1kha=1,000 hectares) of primary forests in 2002-2024, about 15% of the country's entire tree cover. BOOK OF THE MONTH Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer The human urge to view nature as something that is passive is rather strong, which shows itself in the seemingly carefree way in which we plunder it for our gains. But as Jeff Vandermeer's award-winning weird fiction novel Annihilation shows, this couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, natural processes are gigantic and care not a whit for human claims of mastery. If we cannot adapt our ways to the laws of nature, we will be overwhelmed, subsumed and, well, annihilated. In the novel this process takes the form of a seemingly alien entity that creates a human free zone in south Florida, called Area X. As Area X expands, all human signs are obliterated, and people caught inside it are changed into inhuman beings, monstrous to us, but utterly harmonious with nature. The first of an acclaimed trilogy, Annihilation is a must-read for its imaginative and unsettling depiction of nature that doesn't care about human beings. So that's it for this edition of Climate Change & You, dear reader. Sayantan will be back in a fortnight with the next instalment. Also Read: When winter melts into summer
Business Recorder
3 hours ago
- Climate
- Business Recorder
Karachi braves very hot weather
KARACHI: The megacity's residents endured a sweltering Friday as temperatures soared to 39 degrees Celsius accompanied by 60 percent humidity, making for an oppressive and stifling atmosphere across Karachi. According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department, the weather remained hot to very hot and dry across most parts of the province, with gusty winds observed in southern and eastern districts. Despite the challenging conditions, intermittent winds from the west and southwest offered brief spells of relief for the public battling the heat and humidity throughout the day. The PMD reported a morning humidity level of 67 percent, adding to the discomfort. The evening brought only slight respite with levels ranging between 35 percent and 45 percent. The minimum temperature in Karachi was recorded at 30 degrees Celsius. The weekend outlook suggests continued hot and humid weather with maximum temperatures forecasted between 37 degrees Celsius and 39 degrees Celsius on Saturday and Sunday. Winds are expected to persist from the west and southwest directions, which could provide slight relief. Authorities have urged citizens to remain hydrated, avoid direct sun exposure during peak hours, and check on vulnerable individuals including the elderly and children. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Time of India
4 hours ago
- Climate
- Time of India
Wet, windy weekend likely; mercury may not rise much
New Delhi: The city witnessed an overcast sky on Friday, though no major weather activity was recorded until 8 pm, except for a trace of rain at Lodhi Road. While the weather department had forecast thunderstorms, rain, and strong winds for Friday evening and the coming five days, the day remained mostly calm. The cool conditions and light westerly winds contributed to a drop in both humidity and temperature. The maximum temperature settled at 34.8 degrees Celsius — six degrees below normal and a notable drop from Thursday's 39.1 degrees Celsius. The minimum temperature was 27.3 degrees Celsius, one degree below normal. Humidity ranged between 75% and 50%, and wind speeds hovered around 8 km/h. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), no significant rise in daytime temperatures is expected over the next week, owing to the influence of a western disturbance and added moisture from the Arabian Sea. This western disturbance is likely to affect the region through June 2. For Saturday, the IMD has forecast maximum temperatures between 36 degrees Celsius and 38 degrees Celsius, expected to hold steady through June 2, before dipping slightly to 35 degrees Celsius – 37 degrees Celsius by June 3. The IMD also predicts thunderstorms, rain, and gusty winds from Saturday through Monday. However, no colour-coded weather warning has been issued. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch vàng CFDs với mức chênh lệch giá thấp nhất IC Markets Đăng ký Undo So far, May 2025 has been the wettest on record for Delhi, with 186.4 mm of rainfall recorded up to May 30. The city has also experienced five major storms this month, four of which were squalls with peak wind speeds reaching up to 82 km/h. These storms were triggered by the influx of moisture combined with western disturbances or cyclonic circulations. In its latest forecast, the IMD anticipates above-normal rainfall for the upcoming monsoon season and has ruled out any heatwaves in June, thanks to continued rain activity. Meanwhile, Delhi's air quality remained in the moderate category, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) recorded at 167 on Friday, slightly down from 171 the previous day (on a scale of 0 to 500).
Time of India
5 hours ago
- Climate
- Time of India
Maximum temperature drops 3.5°C, high winds bring relief from intense heat in Gurgaon
Gurgaon: Residents of the city woke up to a cooler morning on Friday as the city experienced a dip in temperature. The minimum temperature dropped to 24.5 degrees Celsius, marking a 2.4°C decline from the previous day. The maximum temperature also saw a significant fall, settling at 34.1°C, which was 3.5 degrees lower than Thursday's high. The cooler conditions were accompanied by overcast skies and persistent gusty winds, which helped keep the mercury in check throughout the day. According to local weather officials, the drop in temperature was primarily due to increased cloud cover and strong winds sweeping across the region. Meteorologists forecast similar weather patterns over the coming days, with the possibility of light rain in parts of NCR, including Gurgaon. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a yellow alert for the region, warning of thunderstorms, lightning, and gusty winds ranging from 30 to 40 kmph at isolated locations. The alert remains in effect until next Thursday. While Friday remained largely dry, the overcast skies and breezy conditions brought much-needed relief to residents grappling with the heat. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Rugas no pescoço? Esse truque caseiro pode ajudar (Tente isso hoje à noite) Revista & Saúde Saiba Mais Undo IMD advised citizens to stay updated with local weather alerts and take necessary precautions, especially during windy spells. The current weather shift is expected to provide temporary comfort, though officials caution that conditions may change rapidly. Residents are encouraged to remain vigilant and plan their outdoor activities accordingly. Meanwhile, Delhi witnessed an overcast sky on Friday, though no major weather activity was recorded until 8 pm, except for a trace of rain at Lodhi Road. While the weather department had forecast thunderstorms, rain, and strong winds for Friday evening and the coming five days, the day remained mostly calm. The cool conditions and light westerly winds contributed to a drop in both humidity and temperature. The maximum temperature settled at 34.8 degrees Celsius—six degrees below normal and a notable drop from Thursday's 39.1 degrees Celsius. The minimum temperature was 27.3 degrees Celsius, one degree below normal. Humidity ranged between 75% and 50%, and wind speeds hovered around 8 km/h.
