NEW DELHI: A new study examining the country’s weather from 1971 to 2022 has revealed that southern India is drying the fastest, with the most persistent drought hotspots along the eastern coast.It also says that the northwest has emerged as India’s heat epicentre, with the strongest trends in daytime temperature, humid heat and heatwave severity.The study, “Evolution of Climate Extremes Over the Indian Subcontinent Using a Revised CEI”, was published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Climatology and made public on Friday.It was carried out by researchers at the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Atria University, Bengaluru, and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF).The analysis also highlights that the land area hit by temperature extremes has expanded by 20 per cent to 40 per cent per decade across central and northwestern India between 1971 and 2022. This has turned scattered hotspots in the 1980s into broad, continuous zones of heat stress by the 2010s.In a statement, Dr M Rajeevan, co-author of the study and former secretary at the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said, “What stands out over five decades is not just that India is warming, but that heat and drought extremes are covering more and more of the country. They have moved from a few pockets to large, connected regions, and that is a different order of risk to plan for.”
