Western Himalayas and northeast India warmed the most in the past four decades. Credit: Kiran Jonnalagadda/CC BY 2.0
Climatologists have detected an increasing trend of rising temperatures in some areas of India over the past four decades1. Overall, the country has experienced strong warming post-monsoon season.
Greenhouse gases and pollutants contribute to global warming, which is not uniform across the world. India has seven different temperature regions with varying degrees of warming.
Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in West Bengal analysed satellite, surface and reanalysis data from 1980 to 2020, and used model-based projections to track the past and future evolution of temperatures in India.
The team, led by Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath, found a strong warming trend in northwest, northeast and central India during the pre-monsoon season. Temperatures in these regions rose between 0.2°C and 0.4°C each decade from 1980 to 2020. But the whole country showed a warming trend during the post-monsoon season.
Warming was greatest in western Himalaya and northeast India, where temperatures soared by about 0.3°C to 0.5°C every decade. The researchers say this could intensify melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, threatening water security and increasing the likelihood of flash floods.
Model-based predictions of surface temperatures show that India could continue to experience a temperature rise by 1.1°C to 5.1°C unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, they warn.
