India's hottest year recorded in 2024

Authorities say high temperatures and prolonged heatwaves were caused by climate change

A boy cools off under a public tap in Jalandhar, northern India. AFP

India experienced its hottest year on record in 2024, officials said, with large areas of the world’s most populous nation suffering through extended heatwaves induced by climate change.

Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of the India Meteorological Department, said the country's annual mean temperature was more than 0.5ºC above the long-term average last year.

“The annual mean temperature for the country during 2024 crossed 0.65ºC above the long-term average. It was the warmest year on record since 1901,” Dr Mohapatra told a press conference.

The previous highest mean temperature was recorded in 2016, when it rose 0.54ºC above the long-term average. “It is showing an increasing trend because of the impact of climate change,” he added.

The annual mean temperature is arrived at by collecting the maximum and minimum daily temperatures recorded at observatories across India "and then the average cumulative maximum and minimum temperature is divided by 12", said Mahesh Palawat, vice president of Skymet Weather, a private forecaster.

The country of 1.4 billion people has been experiencing unusually hot weather in recent years, with several places reporting record temperatures and prolonged heatwaves – when temperatures cross the 40°C mark. The temperature in the capital, New Delhi, reached 52.9ºC in May, the highest recorded in the country, and at least 37 Indian cities reported temperatures of more than 45ºC that month, according to the meteorological authority.

The heat caused nearly 400 deaths across the country and forced more than 40,000 people to seek medical treatment between March and July, the government told Parliament.

A survey by HeatWatch, an Indian non-profit group, put the toll higher, saying more than 700 people lost their lives because of heatstroke during those months. Birds fell from the sky and hospitals reported an influx of patients both day and night due to the heat. Doctors told The National of a patient who was admitted with a body temperature of 41ºC, before being put in a tub filled with ice and cold water to bring it down.

Weather experts attributed the record heat to the absence of periodic light rain owing to the lack of active western disturbance – a weather system that emanates from the Mediterranean and brings moisture-rich clouds to the subcontinent – as a result of climate change.

Experts have also blamed the rampant expansion of cities and towns and the shrinking of green cover and water bodies in cities including New Delhi, as hot winds become trapped in areas with a high number of multistorey buildings.