assignment on climate of india

• Climate of India

Did you ever hear your mother say, “The weather is getting hot” or your uncle says, “The climate of this area is cold”? Do you know what is the difference between Climate and Weather ? Rest assured because you’ll find out what it is soon and study the Climate of India as well.

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Climate and weather.

Climate  is a total of weather conditions and variations over a large area for a very long period of time of more than thirty years. But how is weather different from climate?  Weather refers to the state of the atmosphere over an area at any given period of time. Weather can change throughout the day whereas the climate of a country is the same for many years.

The Climate of India

The climate of India is described as a  monsoon type. This type of climate is found in south and southeast Asia. However, there are variations in climatic conditions in the country itself. The coastal regions of India show the least amount of difference between the temperatures of night and day. In the interior regions, the difference in temperatures of day and night is huge.

Climatic Controls

Climatic controls are the factors that control the variations in temperature in the climate of India. There are six major climatic controls. They are:

• Latitude : As the earth is round, sunlight does not reach everywhere equally. The temperature decreases as we move from the equator to the poles.
• Altitude: As we move from the surface of the earth to the higher altitudes, the temperature decreases.
• Pressure and wind system:  The pressure and wind system of any area depend on the latitude and altitude of that place. Thus, it influences the temperature accordingly.
• Distance from the sea:  Coastal regions are cooler as compared to interior regions. As the distance from the sea increases, its influence decreases and the people experience extreme weather conditions.
• Ocean currents:  Cold ocean currents flowing over a region will decrease the temperature of that area whereas warm currents will increase the temperature.
• Relief features:  Relief features are the barriers that block currents from entering the country. High mountains act as barriers for cold or hot winds.

Factors affecting the Climate of India

We know that Tropic of Cancer, which separates the tropical areas and the sub-tropical areas of the earth, passes through the middle of Rann of Kuchchh in the west to Mizoram in the east. Therefore, the climate of India has characteristics of both tropical and sub-tropical climates.

India has very tall mountains of about 6000 meters. The Himalayas prevent the cold winds from central Asia from entering India. It is due to this reason that India has a milder winter as compared to central Asia.

Pressure and Winds

India has unique wind and pressure conditions. During winter, the northern area near the Himalayas has high pressure. Therefore, winds from this region blow to the south where the pressure is lower. In summer, the northern part has lower pressure. Therefore, there is a reversal of wind direction. The winds from the south blow towards the north. These winds greatly affect the climate of India.

The Indian Monsoon

The climate of India depends greatly on monsoon winds . The monsoons usually happen due to the differential heating of land and water. You probably know that land heats faster than water. This change in heating leads to a difference in pressures, which in turn leads to currents. Thus, the changes in pressure conditions also affect the monsoons. Normally, there is high pressure in the tropical eastern-south Pacific Ocean and low pressure in the tropical eastern Indian Ocean. But as years have gone by, there has been a reversal in the pressure conditions. Therefore, the eastern Pacific has lower pressure. This periodic change in pressure conditions is known as Southern Oscillations or SO.

The Seasons

The climate of India has distinct seasonal patterns . The weather conditions change greatly from one season to another. The changes in temperature are extreme in the interior regions. The coastal regions do not experience extreme temperatures.

The Cold Weather Season (Winter)

The cold weather season in India begins from mid-November and stays until February. December and January are the coldest months. The temperature decreases as we go from south to north. The average temperature in the south in winter is 24° – 25° while in the north, it is between 10° and 15° Celsius.

The Hot Weather Season (Summer)

The hot weather season in India is from March to May. In May, the temperatures go up to 45° in the northwestern parts of the country. Towards the end of the summer season, there are pre-monsoons showers common in Kerala and Karnataka. They are often referred to as ‘ mango showers ‘ because they help in the early ripening of mangoes in these states.

The Advancing Monsoon (Rainy Season)

By early June, the trade winds of the southern winds bring abundant moisture to the country. The windward side of the Western Ghats receives very heavy rainfall, more than 250 cm. The monsoon is known for its uncertainties. While it causes heavy floods in one part, it may be responsible for droughts in the other. It is also irregular in arrival and retreat.

Retreating Monsoons (Transition Season)

During October-November, the monsoons become weaker. The sun moves towards the south. By the beginning of October, monsoon withdraws from the Northern Plains. There is a transition from hot rainy season to dry winter season.

Distribution of Rainfall

Some parts of India receive about 400 cm of rainfall annually. However, it is less than 60 cm in Rajasthan and adjoining parts of Gujarat, Haryana, and Punjab. The rest of the country receives moderate rainfall. Owing to this nature of monsoons, the annual rainfall is highly variable from year to year.

Here’s a Solved Question for You

Q: Monsoons arrive in India approximately in:

a) early may     b) early June      c) early July      d) early August

Solution:   b) early June. By early June, the trade winds of the southern winds bring abundant moisture to the country. These winds precipitate to cause rainfall in the southern parts of India first.

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2 responses to “Climate of India”

But how can winds come from north of himalaya by crossing mountains in winter??

The winds do not come from North of Himalaya. The North Western part of India gets rainfall from the Western Disturbances which originate from the Mediterranean sea

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Revision Notes for Climate of India Class 10 Geography ICSE

Icse revision notes for climate of india class 10 geography.

Climate of India and Regional Variations 

• India has a tropical monsoon type of climate. This is because India lies in the tropical belt and its climate is influenced by the monsoon winds. Hot summers and dry winters are characteristic of the monsoon type of climate.
• India has many relief features which affect its climate. For example, the Himalayas influence the climate of India in the following ways: 
• It protects northern India from the cold winds which blow from central Asia. Without this range, the Indian plains would experience extremely cold climate. 
• Northern India experiences continental type of climate because of the presence of the Himalayas. Main characteristics of this type of climate are hot summers, cold winters and little rainfall. The diurnal range (difference between maximum and minimum temperature) of temperature is also large. 

Regional Variations

India has a vast latitudinal and longitudinal extent. Thus, it has vast regional variations. Some of these are:

• While Barmer in Rajasthan experiences a temperature of 48–50°C in June, Pahalgam in Kashmir experiences 22°C in the same month.
• While Kerala enjoys tropical climate with warm and moist air, Punjab experiences continental type of climate with severe heat during summers and severe cold during winters. 
• While the temperature in Kerala remains at about 20–22°C during winters, in Kargil, the temperature may drop below −40°C. 
• While the difference between day and night temperatures in Kerala is hardly 7–8°C, the diurnal range of temperature is extremely high in the Thar desert. The difference between the day and night temperature is between 25°C and 30°C. 
• Precipitation also differs in the country. While the precipitation is in the form of snowfall over the Himalayas, it rains over other parts of the country. 
• While Mawsynram and Cherrapunji receive about 1100 cm of rainfall in Meghalaya, Jaisalmer in Rajasthan receives only about 9 cm of rainfall annually. 
• ∙ Most parts of India receive rainfall during June to September, but the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu receive rainfall during winters. 

Factors Affecting the Climate of India 

1. The Himalayas 

• The Himalayas protect the North Indian Plains from severe cold winds which blow from Central Asia during winter.
• The rain-bearing winds blowing from the Arabian Sea bring in rainfall over the northern plains after striking the Himalayas. Central Asia lies in the rain shadow area of the Himalayas and hence hardly receives any precipitation from these winds.

2. The Monsoon Winds 

• The monsoon winds affect the climate of India. The southwest monsoon winds blowing from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal bring rainfall over the entire country during June, July and August.
• By the beginning of October, the winds start to retreat from central India. The northeast monsoon winds bring rain to Tamil Nadu in winters. 

3. Latitude 

• The tropic of Cancer divides the country into two parts. The northern part lies in the temperate zone, while the southern part lies in the tropical zone. 
• While the northern part of the country lying in the temperate zone experiences hot summer and cool winters, the southern parts of the country located in the tropical zone experiences hot climate. 

4. Varied Relief 

• Relief features play an important role in shaping the climate of India. The areas located in the windward side of the Western Ghats receive heavy rainfall, while the Deccan region lying on the leeward or rain shadow area of the Western Ghats receives very little rainfall.
• The southwest monsoon winds blow parallel to the Aravalli Range. The latter is not able to stop the moisture-laden winds, making Rajasthan a dry state. 
• Areas located in southern Assam receive heavy rainfall compared to the regions located to their north. This is because the hills in Southern Assam block the winds and force them to shed their moisture. By the time these winds arrive in northern Assam, they are comparatively dry. 

5. Altitude 

• Temperature decreases with higher altitude. There is a decrease of 1°C for every 166 m rise in height. 
• Thus, the mountains are cooler than the plains. Therefore, the temperature at Ooty is lower than that at Kochi as the former is located at a higher altitude. 

6. Influence of the Surrounding Seas 

• India is a peninsular country which is surrounded by seas and oceans on three sides.
• These water bodies affect the climate of the regions which lie close to the sea. These regions experience moderate, equable and maritime climate. 

7. Western Disturbances 

• Because of the shifting of pressure belts in central and west Asia, northern India comes under the influence of western disturbances.
• These western disturbances cause rainfall over the northern parts of the country and snowfall over Jammu and Kashmir. 

8. Distance from the Sea 

• The regions located far away from the Sea and in the interior of the continent experience a continental type of climate.
• The summers are extremely hot, and the winters are extremely cold.

Phenomena and Mechanism of the Monsoons 

The monsoon winds are caused by the differential heating and cooling of the land and the sea. They are divided into two systems: summer monsoon and winter monsoon.

1. Summer Monsoon

• The land heats quickly during summers, and hence, low-pressure conditions develop over the land. As the sea is relatively cool, high pressure area develops over the sea. 
• Because winds move from a high-pressure area to a low-pressure area, winds move from the sea to the land. This is called summer monsoon.
• In May, June and July, the plains of the Indian subcontinent receive vertical rays of the Sun. While a low-pressure area develops over the land, a high-pressure area develops over the sea. 
• Thus, winds blow from the Indian Ocean northwards and northwestwards into Asia. Because they blow from the southwest, they are known as the southwest summer monsoon. 

2. Winter Monsoon 

• During the winter, oceans tend to become warm and the land cools down. A high pressure area develops over the land and a low-pressure area develops over the Indian Ocean.
• The winds move from a high-pressure area to a low-pressure area. Thus, the winds which blow from the land to the sea are dry and are devoid of any moisture. They bring cold weather and do not produce any rainfall.
• When these winds blow over adjoining oceans, they pick up moisture and bring rainfall over the southern Coromandel Coast (coastal Tamil Nadu) and over the southern tip of Andhra Pradesh.
• Because these winds blow from the northeastern parts of the country, they are also known as northeast monsoon winds.

3. Features of Rainfall in India

• Rainfall in India is mainly concentrated to the months of July, August and September.
• In India, the rainfall is mainly orographic in nature. The places located on the windward side receive more rainfall than the places located on the leeward side. 
• Only a small amount of rainfall is received from cyclones and convectional rainfall.
• Monsoon in India is erratic, uneven and unpredictable. While there are floods in some regions, the other regions experience drought. 

Seasons in India 

The southern monsoon winds have distinct seasonal patterns. In the monsoon type of climate, a year is divided into four seasons. 

1. Hot Dry Summer 

• Summer in India begins from March and continues till May.
• The highest temperature is recorded in the northwestern parts where the highest temperature may reach up to 48°C. South India does not experience intense heat because it experiences moderating influence of the sea. 
• During the summer, a local hot wind called loo blows in the northern parts of the country. Direct exposure to the wind may prove fatal.
• During this season, thunderstorms known as kalbaisakhi hit West Bengal. These are also known as Bardoli Chheerha. These thunderstorms are accompanied by heavy rainfall. It also rains in coastal Kerala and Karnataka. These showers are known as mango showers as they help in the early ripening of mangoes. They are also known as cherry blossoms in Karnataka. 

2. Southwest Monsoon 

• The southwest monsoon begins in June and lasts till September. During summers, a low-pressure area is created over the northwestern part of the Indian Ocean. This attracts the  southeast trade winds. These winds get deflected to their right because of the Coriolis force after crossing the equator. 
• They reach the west coast as the southwest monsoon. They bring heavy rainfall accompanied by violent thunder and lightning. This violent onset of the monsoon is termed the burst of the monsoon.
• The monsoon winds get divided into the Arabian Sea branch and the Bay of Bengal branch. 

Arabian Sea Branch 

• One branch of these winds causes heavy rainfall on the areas which lie on the windward side of the Western Ghats and the Western Coastal Plains. The areas located on the leeward side of the Western Ghats hardly receive any rainfall.
• The second branch of the Arabian Sea monsoon winds strikes the northern coast of Mumbai. It further moves along the river valleys of Narmada and Tapti and cause rainfall in central India. It then mingles with the Bay of Bengal branch after entering the Ganga plains. 
• The third branch strikes the Saurashtra Peninsula and the Kachchh. It then travels to western Rajasthan and runs parallel to the Aravalli Range. Hence, western Rajasthan gets scanty rainfall. 
• The Arabian Sea branch joins the Bay of Bengal branch causing rainfall in the western Himalayas. 

Bay of Bengal Branch 

• The Bay of Bengal branch approaches towards Myanmar and southeast Bangladesh. Because of the presence of the Arakan Hills, they are deflected towards the Indian subcontinent. The monsoon thus enters West Bengal from south and southeast instead of the southwesterly direction.
• This branch then divides into two—one running along the Ganga plains and the other along the Brahmaputra valley. 
• These branches cause heavy rainfall in the Ganga plains, Brahmaputra valley and Garo and Khasi Hills of Meghalaya. Mawsynram and Cherrapunji, which are located on the southern part of the Khasi Range, receive the highest average rainfall in the world. 
• The rainfall received from the southwest monsoon winds are largely affected by topography. This can be borne by the following examples: 
• Mahabaleshwar located on the windward side of the Western Ghats receives heavy rainfall (250 cm). Pune, on the other hand, located on the leeward side gets less than 70 cm of rainfall annually. ∙ It rains heavily in the northeastern parts of the country because of the presence of the mountain ranges. 
• There is a decrease in rainfall as one goes from the east to the west because the winds become dry as they shed their moisture in the course of their journey. Thus, Kolkata receives 120 cm of rainfall, Patna receives 102 cm, Allahabad receives 91 cm and Delhi gets 56 cm of rainfall. 
• The coast of Tamil Nadu does not get rainfall during this season. It is because this coast is parallel to the Bay of Bengal branch of the southwest monsoon winds. It also lies in the rain shadow area of the Arabian Sea branch of the southwest monsoon. 

3. Retreating Monsoon 

• During October and November, the southwest monsoon winds become weaker and start retreating. 
• This season is marked by clear skies and an increased temperature in the northern plains. 
• The retreat of monsoon is at a marked level. This increase in temperature is termed October heat. 
• At this time, the low-pressure conditions shift to the Bay of Bengal giving rise to cyclonic depressions.
• These cyclonic depressions often result in the destruction of life and property generally on the eastern coast and the southern coast. Most of the rainfall of the Coromandel Coast is derived from depressions and cyclones. 

Tropical Cyclones 

• Tropical depressions originating in the Bay of Bengal are caused by local variation of heat and moisture. They result in tropical cyclones in November and December. 
• They generally originate in the neighbourhood of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands between 12°N and 17°N and travel eastwards towards the Bay of Bengal. They result in heavy downpour and cause great loss of life and property. 

October Heat 

• The month of October is marked by clear cloudless sky, high temperature and high humidity. This is called October heat. 
• The month is also a period of transition between the hot rainy season and the cold dry season. 

4. Cold Season 

• The cold weather season in India begins during mid-November in northern India and stays till February. December and January are the coldest months. 
• The temperature decreases from the south to the north. The places in the North Indian Plains experience cold climate. Thus, while the mean temperature during January at Thiruvananthapuram is as high as 31°C, it is only 16°C in Varanasi. 
• The excessive cold in north India during the winter is due to the following reasons: 
• Cold winds blow from the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan over the northwestern parts of India during February. 
• Places such as Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan are far away from the moderating influence of the sea and hence experience continental type of climate. 
• The snowfall in the nearby Himalayan ranges creates a cold wave situation. 
• There are high-pressure conditions over the northwestern parts of the country.
• The northeast trade winds blow from the land to the sea during this season, and hence, they are dry. They pick up moisture when they blow over the adjoining oceans and thus bring rainfall over the Coromandel Coast. 
• Western disturbances are experienced in the northern parts of the country during the cold season.

Rainfall 

• Most parts of the country do not receive rainfall during the winter. Some areas which receive rainfall during the winters are 
• Central and northern parts of the country get occasional rainfall during winter.
• Weak temperate cyclones cause rainfall in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh. This rainfall is beneficial for rabi crops. 
• Northeastern parts of the country also receive winter rainfall. 
• In October and November, northeast monsoon picks up moisture while blowing over the Bay of Bengal and cause torrential rainfall over the coast of Tamil Nadu and the southern tip of Andhra Pradesh. 

Distribution of Rainfall 

Distribution of Rainfall in India 

Regions receiving heavy rainfall (more than 200 cm)

• Slopes of the Western Ghats and the Western Coastal Plains.
• Meghalaya Hills (Garo, Khasi and Jaintia), the southern slopes of the Eastern Himalayas, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal.

Regions receiving moderate rainfall (100–200 cm)

• The southern parts of Tamil Nadu and the northern parts of Andhra Pradesh.
• Middle Ganga Valley, some parts of the Western Ghats, Eastern Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.

Regions receiving low rainfall (50–100 cm)

• Parts of the Deccan plateau comprising the regions of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
• Eastern Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Kashmir.

Regions receiving scanty rainfall (100–200 cm)

• Northern parts of Kashmir, southern Punjab and western Rajasthan.
• The rain shadow regions of the Western Ghats lying in the Deccan Plateau.

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Climate of India, Types, Zones, Map, Factors Affecting Climate of India

Climate of India - Types, Zones, Map, Seasons, Weather. Also read more about Factors Affecting Climate of India. Short notes on Climate of India for UPSC, PDF.

Table of Contents

Climate of India

India has a “monsoon” climate, which is primarily found in South and Southeast Asia. The Arabic term “mausim,” which means seasons, is where the word “monsoon” originates. Several centuries ago, Arab navigators first used the term “monsoon” to refer to a system of seasonal wind reversals along the Indian Ocean coastlines, particularly over the Arabian Sea, in which the winds blow from south-west to north-east in the summer and from north-east to south-west in the winter. In other terms, monsoons are seasonal winds that occur periodically and completely reverse direction every six months.

Even though India has a monsoon-style climate, there are geographical differences in the country’s weather. These regional variations could be categorized as monsoon climate subtypes.

Regional variations in Temperature: On a June day, Churu (Rajasthan) may see temperatures of 50°C or more, whereas Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh) experiences temperatures that barely reach 19°C. Drass (Ladakh) may see temperatures as low as -45°C while Thiruvananthapuram or Chennai may experience 20°C or 22°C on the same day.

Regional variations in Precipitation and its Amount: While it rains in the rest of the country, it snows in the Himalayan regions. In contrast to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, which seldom receives more than 9 cm of precipitation during the same period, Cherrapunji and Mawsynram in the Khasi Hills receive over 1080 cm in a year.

Indus Valley Civilization

Factors Affecting Climate of India

Here’s the List of Factors Affecting Climate of India:

India’s centre region is east-west oriented along the Tropic of Cancer. Thus, the northern portion of India is in the subtropical and temperate zone, whilst the southern portion is in the tropical zone. The tropical zone has high temperatures all year round with a limited daily and annual variation due to its proximity to the equator. The region north of the Tropic of Cancer has a severe climate with a broad range of daily and annual temperatures due to its distance from the equator.

The Himalayan Mountains

The Himalayas and their northern extensions serve as a functional climate barrier. The imposing mountain range functions as an unbreakable barrier, shielding the subcontinent from the icy northern winds. These frigid winds, which originate close to the Arctic Circle, spread across central and eastern Asia. The monsoon winds are also trapped by the Himalayas, which forces them to spread their moisture throughout the Indian subcontinent.

Distribution of Land and Water

India is encircled by the Indian Ocean on three sides, a tall, continuous mountain wall in the north, and the Indian Ocean on one side. Compared to the landmass, the ocean warms and cools more gradually. This seasonal variation in air pressure is caused by the differential heating of the land and the water in and around the Indian subcontinent. Because of the difference in air pressure, the monsoon winds’ direction is reversed.

Distance from the Sea

Because of their extensive coastlines, large coastal areas enjoy a temperate climate. Interior regions of India are far from the sea’s balancing power. Climate extremes therefore exist in certain regions. As a result, people in Mumbai and around the Konkan coast don’t have a strong sense of seasonal weather patterns or extremes in temperature. Seasonal variations in the country’s heartland, including Delhi, Kanpur, and Amritsar, have an effect on many facets of life.

As you ascend, the temperature decreases. Due to the thin air, areas in the highlands are generally cooler than areas in the plains. For instance, although Agra and Darjeeling share the same latitude, Agra’s January temperature is 16°C and Darjeeling’s is only 4°C.

The physiographic or relief features of India have an impact on temperature, air pressure, wind speed and direction, as well as the amount and distribution of rainfall. The southern plateau stays dry because of its leeward location along the Western Ghats during the months of June through September, in contrast to the windward portions of the Western Ghats and Assam.

Indus River System

Climate of India Types

• The cold weather season, Winter season
• The hot weather season, Summer season
• The south-west monsoon season/Rainy season
• The retreating monsoon season

The Cold Weather Season (winter)

Northern India has frigid temperatures from mid-November to February. The coldest months in the northern section of India are December and January. The temperature generally drops from south to north throughout the winter months. There are pleasant days and chilly nights. In the north, frost is typical, and snowfall occurs on the Himalayas’ higher slopes.

The peninsular region of India lacks a clearly defined cold weather season due to the moderating effects of the sea and closeness to the equator. In coastal areas, there is practically any seasonal variation in the distribution of temperature.

The Hot Weather Season

In March, the sun appears to be moving northward toward the Tropic of Cancer, which causes the temperature in north India to climb. In north India, the summer months are April, May, and June. The Deccan plateau had a maximum temperature of roughly 38°C in March. Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh see April temperatures of about 42°C. In the northwest of the country, May temperatures frequently reach 45°C.

Peninsular India has temperatures that are between 20°C to 32°C thanks to the oceans’ moderating effect, which keeps them lower than in north India. The Western Ghats hills’ temperature is below 25°C due to height.

South-West Monsoon Season/Rainy Season

As the temperature rises, the low-pressure conditions over the northwest plains become more intense. Early in June, the low pressure draws the Southern Hemisphere’s trade winds from the Indian Ocean. The south-east trade winds travel in a south-westerly direction as they reach the equator (that is why they are known as south-west monsoons). These winds move towards the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, where they travel over the warm equatorial currents and pick up a tonne of precipitation.

Retreating Monsoon Season

The monsoon trough or low-pressure trough over the northern plains weakens over the months of October and November as a result of the sun’s apparent shift towards the south. The high-pressure system gradually replaces this. The south-west monsoon winds begin to wane and progressively wither away. By the first of October, the monsoon had left the northern plains. The months of October and November serve as a transition from the hot, wet season to the dry winter season.

Monsoon in India

Climate Zones in India

From tropical in the south to temperate and alpine in the Himalayan north, India has a variety of climates. Elevated locations receive snowfall during the winter. India experiences tropical monsoon weather. Due to large geographic areas and latitudinal variations, these various climates exist. India’s climate can be classified into five distinct regions, or “climate zones.” The names of India’s climatic zones are listed below:

• Tropical rainy climatic zone
• Humid subtropical climatic zone
• Tropical Savanna climatic zone
• Mountain climatic zone
• Desert climatic zone

Unemployment Rate in India

Factors Related to Air Pressure and Wind

Numerous interrelated factors have an impact on a location’s climate. Understanding the mechanisms of the following components is necessary to comprehend the variations in local climates in India:

• The distribution of winds and air pressure over the earth’s surface.
• Upper air circulation brought on by elements affecting the global climate as well as the entry of various air masses and jet streams.
• An influx of tropical depressions and western cyclones, sometimes known as disturbances, into India during the south-west monsoon season, which favorably influences rainfall.

With reference to the winter and summer seasons of the year individually, it is possible to comprehend the mechanism of these three components.

Air pressure is defined as the mass of air. Since air is made up of many gases, it has a certain weight. Air pressure, which is measured in millibars, is the amount of air in a given region on Earth. The movement of air over the surface of the earth is called wind. Wind is brought on by variations in air density, which also creates horizontal variations in air pressure. Atmospheric circulation is both the cause and the effect of these pressure systems..

Important Dams in India

Impact of Global Warming on Indian Climate

Temperature increase in the atmosphere.

• As a result of human activity, greenhouse gases are being released into the atmosphere, raising Earth’s temperature.
• The last six years have been the hottest on record.
• The current rise in heat-related illnesses and mortality, the rise in sea levels, and the intensity of natural disasters are all mostly due to climate change.
• The average temperature of the Earth rose by 1°F throughout the 20th century. This is thought to be the fastest increase in a millennium.
• According to research projections, the average surface temperature could rise by 3-5°F by the end of this century if GHGs are not lowered.

Change in landscapes:

• As temperatures rose and weather patterns changed around the world, trees and plants migrated to the highlands and Polar Regions.
• The animals that depend on the vegetation will be compelled to follow it as it attempts to adapt to climate change by shifting to colder locations in order to survive. While some people succeed, many others fail.
• Because of the melting of the ice, other animals that depend on frigid climates, like polar bears, would lose their habitat, endangering their ability to survive.
• Thus, many species, including the human population, are at serious risk of extinction due to the current fast change in the landscape..

A risk to the ecosystem:

• As temperatures rise around the world, weather and vegetation patterns change, forcing certain species to move to colder regions in order to survive.
• Many species are at risk of extinction as a result of this. If the current trend continues, it is predicted that by 2050 one-fourth of Earth’s species may go extinct..

Rising sea levels:

• Thermal expansion causes the sea level to rise when the Earth’s temperature rises (a condition wherein the warm water takes up more area than cooler water). This issue is exacerbated by glacial melt.
• The population residing in low-lying areas, on islands, and along the coasts is in danger from rising sea levels.
• It destroys habitats like mangroves and wetlands that shield coasts from storms, erodes shorelines, and causes property damage.
• The sea level has risen 4 to 8 inches during the past 100 years, and it will continue to climb between 4 and 36 inches over the following 100 years.

Ocean Acidification:

• The ocean is absorbing more CO2 as a result of the atmosphere’s rising CO2 concentration. As a result, the ocean is acidic.
• Plankton, molluscs, and other marine creatures, among others, may suffer harm as a result of the ocean’s increased acidity. Corals are particularly vulnerable to this because they struggle to build and maintain the skeletal structures necessary for their survival..

Increase in the risk of natural and manmade disasters:

• Because of the high ambient temperature, moisture from the land and water is evaporating quickly.
• This results in drought. Drought-affected areas are more vulnerable to the harmful consequences of flooding.
• Due to the existing situation, droughts may occur more frequently and with greater severity. The effects on agriculture, water security, and public health could be disturbing.
• This phenomenon is already affecting nations in Asia and Africa, where droughts are extending and intensifying.
• The world is experiencing more forest fires and droughts as a result of the rising temperatures.
• Hurricanes and tropical storms are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change, which has a terrible effect on both human societies and the environment.
• As warm seas influence the energies of hurricanes and tropical storms, the increase in ocean temperature is the reason of this.
• Rising sea levels, the disappearance of wetlands, and increased coastal development are other variables that contribute to the intensification of hurricanes and tropical storms.

Health issues:

• Health concerns and fatalities may result from the high temperatures over the world.
• Around the world, many people have died as a result of the rising heat waves brought on by climate change.
• For instance, in 2003, India saw more than 1,500 fatalities as a result of the catastrophic heat waves, which also claimed the lives of more than 20,000 people in Europe.
• As a result of the prolonged warm weather allowing disease-carrying insects, animals, and bacteria to survive longer, climate change enhances the spread of infectious diseases.
• Previously inhospitable cooler locations may now be home to diseases and pests that were once restricted to the tropics.
• As a result of climate change, there are currently more people dying from diseases, natural catastrophes, and high temperatures..
• According to the World Health Organization, between 2030 and 2050, climate change may result in an additional 250,000 fatalities year from starvation, malaria, diarrhoea, and excessive heat.

Economic impacts:

• It is predicted that the cost of climate change, if action is not taken to reduce carbon emissions, may range from 5 to 20% of the yearly global GDP.
• In contrast, it would only cost 1% of the GDP to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
• Shoreline habitats may change due to climate change. Ports, near-shore infrastructure, and habitats may need to be relocated as a result, which would cost millions of dollars.
• The increased frequency of hurricanes and other natural disasters can result in significant financial losses due to infrastructure and property damage.
• There is a possibility that thousands of people could go hungry as a result of declining crop yields brought on by protracted droughts and high heat.
• The annual revenue from coral reefs is over $375 billion in products and services. Their very existence is currently in danger.

Agriculture productivity and food security:

• Precipitation, a good temperature, and sun radiation are all necessary for crop cultivation.
• Consequently, climate patterns have always influenced agriculture. The current climate change has impacted agricultural production, food supply, and food security.
• These outcomes have a biophysical, ecological, and financial impact.
• A change in the agricultural production pattern is caused by the increased atmospheric temperature. Climate and agricultural zones are moving towards the poles.
• The rise in atmospheric CO2 has led to a boost in agricultural productivity.
• Precipitation patterns that are unpredictable
• The vulnerability of the impoverished and landless has grown.

Northern Plains of India

Climate of India FAQs

Q What type of climate is India in?

India often experiences tropical monsoons. The areas between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are referred to as tropical.

Q What is the climate of India answer?

Ans. India’s weather is referred to as monsoon-type. Southeast and South Asia have this kind of weather. However, there are variances in the country’s climatic conditions. The least amount of fluctuation between daytime and nighttime temperatures is found in India’s coastal regions.

Q What are 6 climates of India?

Ans. Vasanta (Spring), Grishma(Summer), Varsha (Monsoon), Sharad(Autumn), Hemanta (pre-winter) and Shishira (winter) and this are called Ritu’s.

Q What type of climate India has and why it is so?

Ans. India has a tropical monsoon type of climate. It is because India lies in the tropical belt, and its climate is deeply influenced by the monsoon winds.

Q What are the 4 types of climate in India?

Ans. Thar Desert attracts the southwest summer monsoon winds that are moist and provide the required rainfall in the months from June to October. There are four principal weather and climate of India, winter, summer, monsoon, and post-monsoon.

Other Indian Geography Topics

Other fundamental geography topics.

Sharing is caring!

What type of climate is India in?

What is the climate of india answer.

India's weather is referred to as monsoon-type. Southeast and South Asia have this kind of weather. However, there are variances in the country's climatic conditions. The least amount of fluctuation between daytime and nighttime temperatures is found in India's coastal regions.

What are 6 climates of India?

Vasanta (Spring), Grishma(Summer), Varsha (Monsoon), Sharad(Autumn), Hemanta (pre-winter) and Shishira (winter) and this are called Ritu's.

What type of climate India has and why it is so?

India has a tropical monsoon type of climate. It is because India lies in the tropical belt, and its climate is deeply influenced by the monsoon winds.

What are the 4 types of climate in India?

Thar Desert attracts the southwest summer monsoon winds that are moist and provide the required rainfall in the months from June to October. There are four principal weather and climate of India, winter, summer, monsoon, and post-monsoon.

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Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes PDF (Quick Revision Notes)

The Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes is one of the most effective study materials to get through as it helps the students to get a deeper understanding of each and every topic and also helps the students to score well in their examinations. Each and every topic in these notes is well-explained which helps in increasing the confidence of all the students. The ICSE Geography Class 10 notes Climate of India acts as a great revision tool for all the students. 

Apart from this, the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes also have various other features which include easy language. These notes are written in an easy language to help all the students understand them. As our highly qualified subject matter experts are aware of the learning potential of each and every student, they have designed these Climate of India notes accordingly. Another important feature of these notes is that they are written as per the latest curriculum of ICSE which helps the students to stay updated and also ensures that the students are covering each and every topic and are not missing any topic. Due to this, the students do not feel stressed and anxious and stay relaxed during exam days. 

How to Download the Class 10 ICSE Geography Climate of India Notes?

It is very simple to download the ICSE Geography Class 10 notes Climate of India if you know the right steps to download them. Below are the right steps to download them: 

• Visit the official website of selfstudys i.e. selfstudys.com. 

• After opening the website, you need to scroll down and find the category of ‘Free Study Materials’. After finding the category, you need to click on the category of ‘CISCE’.

• After clicking on the category of ‘CISCE’, a new sub-category will open and you need to click on the option of ‘Revision Notes Exam’. 

• Now, you need to choose the class and the subject for which you want to download the notes. 
• And you are done! It was this simple to download the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes. 

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There are many tips a student can follow if they want to prepare well from the Class 10 ICSE Geography Climate of India notes. They are: 

• Regularly go through your notes: It is advisable for all the students to go through their Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes regularly as it helps in recalling all the important topics which you have learned previously. It also helps in boosting various skills of the students. This will help the students to remember the concept for a longer time. 
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• Blurting: Another great tip which all the students should try while studying the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes is the blurting technique. In this technique, a student has to read the ICSE Geography Class 10 notes Climate of India again and again. After reading repeatedly, the students must test their knowledge by writing everything which they have learned. 
• Take Short Breaks: All the students are advised to take short breaks while doing exam preparation from the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes as it will help the students to promote quality learning and also prepare well for the examination. 

How to Score 100% Marks in Geography While Studying From the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes?

Every student wants to score 100% marks in exams but they are not aware of the various tricks which will help them to score good marks in their exams. The tips are: 

• Find a peaceful place: The first and the most important step to score 100% in exams is to find a peaceful place to study the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 notes as it will help you to focus on your studies as Geography is a subject which requires constant focus and concentration and you will not be able to attain that in a place where there are a lot of noises. So, make sure to find a peaceful place if you want to prepare well and score 100% marks in the exams. 
• Read various books: It is a pretty obvious fact that every student only has one Geography coursebook but apart from that, there are various other books of Geography with a modified view on the Climate of India topic which will help the students to understand in detail. Read the different definitions to find the one which makes the most sense to you. 
• Develop a routine: All the students are advised to develop a daily routine as it will not only help the students to learn the ICSE Geography Class 10 notes Climate of India but will also help the students to divide different topics in the chapter and then give time to each topic. 
• Practise Mindfulness: All the students are advised to practise mindfulness because during exam days, the stress and anxiety levels are often higher than the normal days. So, the students should take care of themselves and stay relaxed. 
• Write the concepts in your own words after learning them: After learning the concepts from the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes, the students should write it down in their own words as it will help them to stick to the learned information and remember it for a long time. 

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There are various moments when a student should study from the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes. Let’s have a look: 

• At the time of Lecture: The Climate of India ICSE Class 10 notes can be used at the time of class lectures. These notes will help you acknowledge the concept with an in-depth understanding of it. These ICSE Geography Class 10 notes Climate of India can also help the students to remember the concepts which they have previously studied and also help them to score good marks in their exams. 
• During Revision: All the students must use the Climate of India ICSE Class 10 Notes during the time of revision as it acts as a great revision tool because it helps the students to get an idea about the progress of their exam and also the stronger and weaker areas and can work on them to improve their overall exam preparation. 
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• As per the latest pattern: The Class 10 ICSE Geography Climate of India notes are created as per the latest pattern of ICSE by our highly qualified subject matter experts who have made sure to create them as per the latest pattern of ICSE to ensure that the student stay updated about the latest curriculum and does not miss any important topic. 
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• Climate of India

• The State of at morphemic Conditions over an area at a particular time refers to weather. Climate refers to such condition over a large area and follows a similar general pattern over many years.
• Climographs show average monthly values of maximum temperature minimum temperature, and rainfall for a given place.
• As we move away from the equator towards the poles, the average annual temperature decreases. In India the southern part lies in the tropical belt closer to the equator. Therefore, this region has higher average temperature than the northern part.
• A large part of southern India, because of its long coast line, comes under the moderating influence of the sea. Several hill stations of the Himalayan region have a cool climate even during the peak summer months.
• India lies in the belt of dry north-east trade winds. The climate of India is also affected by the movement of upper air currents known as ‘Jet streams’.
• Cyclone depressions coming from Mediterranean Sea called Western Disturbances cause low to moderate rainfall over northern India.
• The northern plain experiences dry and hot winds called ‘Loo’ towards the end of summer season; pre-monsoon showers are common in the Deccan plateau. They are locally known as mango showers.
• The monsoon forms in the tropical area approximately between 200N and 200S latitudes. The bulk of the annual rainfall in India is received from the South West Monsoon.
• The atmosphere traps a lot of the solar energy that reaches Earth by preventing it from totally escaping back to space. This is called Global Warming.
• Global Warming is causing many changes in the distribution of heat in the Earth system. One of the human activities that contributes to global warming is deforestation.
• Climograph: It shows averages monthly values of maximum temperature and minimum temperature, and rainfall for a given place.
• Weather: The state of the atmosphere at a given time and place respect to variables such as temperature, moisture, wind velocity and air pressure.
• Monsoon: The climate of India is strongly influenced by the monsoon winds. The regular periodic reversals of winds that blow towards the Indian coast are monsoons. Arab traders named this seasonal reversal of wind system as Monsoon.
• Insolation: It is the total amount of solar radiation energy received on a given surface area during a given time.
• Jet Streams: The climate of India is affected by the movement of upper air currents knows as ‘Jet streams’. These are fast flowing air currents in a narrow belt in the upper atmosphere, above 12,000m. A Jet stream causes the neighbouring atmosphere to cool and causes rain.
• Pressure Zone : The exertion of force by one body on the surface of another.
• Global Warming: An Unequal and continuing rise in the average temperatures of the Earth. As global temperature increases, the ice in the Tundra melts more. The methane that is trapped under the ice escapes in to the atmosphere, increasing the global temperatures. One of the human activities that contributes to global warming is deforestation.
• The Earth has undergone several cycles of warming and cooling. Earlier cycles of this happened over very long periods of time. The huge time spans allowed much of the life on Earth to adapt to the changing climatic conditions. The problem with present cycle is the speed of heating is much rapid and could result in catastrophic changes. That’s why the present cycle is called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), which literally means human generated global warming.
• Much of the global warming that has been occurring since the Industrial Revolution is because of human activities, unlike in the previous cycles.
• Human activities are negatively contributing to climate change by causing changes in Earth’s atmosphere due to heavy release of greenhouse gases. The largest known contribution comes from the burning of fossil fuels which releases carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere.
• When we extract and burn fossil fuels such as coal or petroleum, we cause the release of Co 2 and other heat-trapping ‘green house gases’ into the atmosphere.
• Large scale demolition of forests is also abetting the raise of Co 2 levels in the atmosphere. Worldwide deforestation means we do not have as many trees as we need to absorb the extra Co 2 . This means more Co 2 stays in the atmosphere and traps more heat.
• A report issued by the IPCC stated that it is ‘virtually certain’ that emissions of carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel burning is the main cause of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide during the 21st century.
• Activities related to agriculture such as fertilizing crops, storing waste in landfills, raising livestock are resulting in emissions of green house gases and speeding up the process of global warming. Emissions of small particles, known as aerosols, into the air can also lead to refection or absorption of the Sun’s energy.
• Climate change affects our environment and natural resources, and impacts our way of life in many ways. The more green-house gases we emit, the faster the climate change will be and more devastating our future will become.

3. How is climate change causing global warming? Suggest measures to minimize the influence of the global warming?

• Today’s problem is global warming is happening at a much rapid pace and could lead to catastrophic climatic changes across the globe. Much of the warming that has been occurring since the Industrial Revolution is man-made.
• As global temperature increases, the ice in the Tundra melts faster. The methane that is trapped under the polar ice escapes into the atmosphere, increasing the global temperatures. In turn, this causes even more ice to melt, releasing even more methane, and so on. Methane is said to be even more powerful than Carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
• To minimize the influence of the global warming. We should plan to reduce the emissions of green-house gases. We should take up afforestation and encourage public transport systems.
• Unplug all electrical devices completely when not in use.
• Swift to energy-efficient LED bulbs.
• Regulate room temperature. Keep the refrigerator’s temperature between 36-38 degrees’ F.
• Use Micro waves. Clean air conditioners filters regularly.
• Dry cloths on clothesline instead of a dryer.
• Ensure all taps are leak-free.
• Install dud –flush toilets to minimize water wastage.
• Reduce air- travel considerably.
• Use rechargeable batteries.
• Buy in bulk to reduce frequent trips to the super markets.
• Establish alternative power generators to avoid burning Fossil fuels.
• Afforestation should be taken up.

Short Answer type Questions 1. Write a short note on factors influencing climatic variation in hilly areas and deserts?

• Generally temperature decreases as altitude increases. Hills and mountains have lower temperature than plain areas. Relief of an area influences the climate.
• Several hill stations of Himalayan region have cool climate even during the peak summer months due to this factor. Similarly Kodaikanal and Ooty have cooler climate, compared to places near the coast, because of their altitude.
• As the Aravallis stop wind passages the Arabian Sea, the summer monsoons will not able to enter into Rajasthan. Aravallis for ‘rain shadow area’ on their western part in Rajasthan, which means the summer monsoons from Arabian Sea will not cross the mountain range. This makes about 50 per cent Rajasthan go dry. This how the deserts are formed. The rainfalls in this region are scanty and temperatures are very high.

2. What are the disagreements between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries about AGW?

• Due to burning of fossil fuels, greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. Developed countries want developing countries to cut down the emissions of green house gasses.
• Developing countries argue that their economic development will be seriously damaged if they do not burn fossil fuels. Developing countries insist that developed countries should take their fair share to help find alternatives that can help them to progress.
• Which month receives highest rainfall?
• Which months experience highest and lowest temperatures?
• Why the maximum amount of rainfall is between June and October?
• Why the temperature is high between March and May?
• Identity relief conditions causing variation in temperature and rainfall.

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Climate of India

Class 10 - veena bhargava geography solutions, multiple choice questions.

The temperature decreases with increasing altitude at the rate of

• 2° C for every 140m
• 1° C for every 32m
• 6° C for every 500m

1° C for every 166m

The SW monsoon blows in summer from

Monsoon winds are

• Local winds

Periodic winds

The local winds Kali Baisakhi are accompanied by heavy rainfall. It is good for

• cotton crop
• coffee crop

SW monsoon winds pick up moisture from

• Bay of Bengal
• Arabian sea
• Indian ocean
• Mediterranean sea

The Retreating monsoon causes winter rain in

Cold season extends from

• June to September
• March to May
• October to November

December to February

Loo, the hot dusty winds blow in the month of

North East Monsoon blows in the direction of

• Southwest to Northeast
• West to East

Northeast to Southwest

• Northwest to Southeast

Question 10

Western disturbances originate in the

Mediterranean Sea

Answer the following questions

Name the factors affecting the climate of a place.

The factors affecting the climate of a place are:

• Location — Climate of a place depends on its location. Places located in tropical region are hotter than the places located in temperate region.
• Altitude — The temperature decreases with increase in the height at the rate 1°C for every 166 m. Therefore, places situated on height have temperate climate.
• Distance from sea — Places situated near sea have moderate climate while places situated away from sea have extreme type of climate.
• Physical features — Presence of mountain ranges often decide the climate of a place. For example, the Himalayas act as a barrier to the incoming cold Siberian winds. They also intercept the monsoon winds resulting in heavy rainfall in Indo-Gangetic plain.

Name the type of climate of India.

The climate of India is Tropical Monsoon Type.

What is the chief characteristic feature of the tropical monsoon type of climate?

The chief characteristic feature of the tropical monsoon type of climate is alteration of seasons.

What are onshore winds and offshore winds?

Onshore winds — Wind that blows from the sea towards the land is called onshore winds.

Offshore winds — Winds that blows from the land towards the Sea is called offshore winds.

State the importance of Monsoon season in India.

The monsoon season is important for a number of reasons in India:

• Agriculture — The monsoon season is crucial for agriculture in India, as it provides the necessary moisture for crops to grow. Many of the crops in India, such as rice, wheat, and sugarcane, rely on the monsoon rains to provide the necessary water for their growth.
• Water resources — The monsoon season replenishes the water resources in India, including rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. This is especially important in regions that rely on these sources of water for irrigation, drinking, and other purposes.
• Economy — The monsoon season is also important for the economy of India, as it supports many sectors of the economy, including agriculture, forestry, and tourism.

Name a few local winds that pass through India.

Local winds that pass through India are:

• Kali Baisakhi
• Mango Showers

Which is the more important branch — the Arabian Sea Branch or the Bay of Bengal Branch? Why?

The Arabian Sea Branch is more important branch because of the following reasons:

• Arabian Sea Branch is almost thrice the volume of the Bay of Bengal Branch.
• Arabian Sea Branch provides rain in the entire country while the Bay of Bengal branch provides rain in north-eastern part only.

Which is the first state to receive the monsoon winds and the last to see its retreat in India?

Kerala is the first state to receive the monsoon winds and the last to see its retreat in India.

State two important characteristic features of the Indian monsoons.

Two important characteristic features of the Indian monsoons are:

• Indian monsoons are erratic, unpredictable, irregular and unevenly distributed.
• Indian monsoons are orographic in nature. The effects caused due to the Himalayas and the Western Ghats bring most of the monsoon rainfall.

Name the different seasons of India, stating the months when they are experienced.

The different seasons of India are:

• The Hot Dry Season — March to May
• The Rainy Season or the season of South-West Monsoon — June to September.
• The season of retreating South-West Monsoon — October to November
• The Cold season or the season of North-East Monsoon — December to February

Question 11

What is the meaning of the word 'monsoon'?

The word Monsoon has been derived from the Arabic word 'Mausim' which means season.

Question 12

How are monsoon winds different from the land and sea breezes?

Monsoon winds are different from the land and sea breezes in the following ways:

Question 13

Why are there great variations in India's climate?

There are great variations in India's climate because of presence of different physical features and the large extent of the country. Following are the factors that cause variations in India's climate:

• The places lying to the north of Tropic of Cancer experience continental type of climate while places lying to the south of Tropic of Cancer experience hot climate with average temperature of 25°C to 27°C throughout the year.
• The places situated on the vast east-west coastline of India experience equable or maritime type of climate with annual temperature range of about 3°C to 5°C whereas the places in the interior north have the annual temperature range upto 20°C.
• The Monsoon are erratic, unpredictable, irregular and unevenly distributed. Due to this the annual rainfall varies from about 1187 cm at Mawsynram in Cherrapunji, the highest in the world to less than 25 cm in Thar desert in Rajasthan.
• Places situated at higher altitudes are cooler as compared to places in the plains.
• Presence of the Himalayan range also influences the climate of India by obstructing Siberian winds and intercepting Monsoon winds.

Question 14

Give reasons to justify that Himalayas act as a perfect climatic divide.

The Himalayas act as a perfect climatic divide because:

• The great Himalayan range obstructs the bitter cold winds from Siberia from entering the Indian Subcontinent.
• The Himalayan range intercepts the rain-bearing south-west monsoon winds, forcing them to shed their moisture, resulting in heavy rainfall in the North-East and Indo-Gangetic Plain.

Question 15

Which winds are responsible for the rain experienced over the greater part of India?

The South-West Monsoon winds are responsible for the rain experienced over the greater part of India.

Question 16

During which part of the year is the rain experienced in India?

India experiences rain in the months from June to September which is the season of the South-West Monsoon.

Question 17

How are the sources of rainfall in the north-west part of India different from the rain experienced on the eastern coastal areas in winter?

The winter rainfall in the north-west part of India occurs due to westerly depressions or temperate cyclones originating in the Mediterranean sea. On the contrary the rainfall experienced on the eastern coastal areas in winter is due to North-East monsoon winds.

Question 18

Why does Kanyakumari experience an equable climate?

Kanyakumari experience an equable climate because of land breeze and sea breeze as it is situated on sea coast.

Question 19

Why does central Maharashtra receive scanty rainfall?

Maharashtra receives scanty rainfall because it lies in the rain shadow of Western Ghats.

Question 20

Why is western part of India a desert region?

The western part of India gets very less rainfall due to following reasons:

• The Aravali's alignment is parallel to rain-bearing South-West Monsoon winds and as such they do not offer any obstruction. Furthermore, these hills are very low.
• The moisture-laden winds passing over Rajasthan do not saturate as the heat in the desert region increases their capacity to hold moisture. Thus they reach Shivaliks without shedding their moisture.

Question 21

What are western disturbances?

Western disturbances are Westerly depressions or Temperate cyclones originating in the Mediterranean sea. They cause winter rain in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh and snowfall in Himalayan belts.

Question 22

Name one part of India that receives rainfall in winter and summer as well.

Northern India (Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh) receives rainfall in winter and summer as well.

Question 23

Explain how retreating monsoon winds are different from the north-east trades.

Question 24

Name a place in India which receives the heaviest rainfall. To which state does this place belong?

Mawsynram receives the heaviest rainfall in the world. This place belongs to Meghalaya State of India.

Question 25

Name the winds that are responsible for causing heaviest rainfall in the region.

The Bay of Bengal branch of South-West monsoon winds is responsible for causing heaviest rainfall in the region.

Question 26

What is meant by a 'rain shadow' area? Give an example and state the mountains responsible for the rain shadow area.

The leeward side of the mountain that do not receive or receive very less rainfall is called rain shadow area. For example, Maharashtra gets very less rainfall as it is the rain shadow area of the Western Ghats.

Question 27

Name the winds that bring rain to the Tamil Nadu coast.

North-East Monsoon winds bring rains to the Tamil Nadu coast.

Question 28

Give reasons :

• In spite of the Aravalis many parts of Rajasthan do not receive much rain.
• The Malabar coast has less rainy months but receives more rain than Coromandal Coast.
• Punjab has three sources of rain.
• Mawsynram receives more rain than Shillong.
• In spite of the Aravalis many parts of Rajasthen do not receive much rain because the Aravalis do not obstruct the Monsoon winds due to their parallel alignment to the winds and low heights of Aravalis.
• The Malabar coast receive more rainfall because of the strong Arabian sea branch of the South-west monsoon while Coromandal Coast gets its share of rainfall from North-East Monsoon which is weaker and has less capacity.
• Punjab has three sources of rain as it gets its share from the Arabian sea branch, the Bay of Bengal branch (deflected from the eastern parts) and the western disturbances.
• Mawsynram lies in the windward side while Shillong lies in the leeward side of Khasi hills. Therefore, Mawsynram receives more rain than Shillong.

Question 29

Explain how is the winter rain caused. How is this rain beneficial?

The winter rain is caused by Western Disturbances in North and North-East Monsoon winds in Tamil Nadu. In northern India, rain is caused by Westerly depressions or Temperate cyclones originating in Mediterranean Sea. These rains are beneficial for rabi crops like wheat and Barley. The winter rains caused by North-East Monsoon winds brings rainfall to Tamil Nadu and parts of Andhra Pradesh. This rainfall is heavy, stormy and destructive for crops.

Question 33

Refer to the Data of Chennai, Pune, New Delhi and Kolkata to answer this question.

Answer the following questions:

• Calculate the annual range of temperature.
• What is the total rainfall experienced by the station?
• When does the station receive maximum rainfall? State a reason for your answer.

(a) Annual Range of temperature = 32.5 - 24.5 = 8

(b) Total rainfall = 2.8 + 0.7 + 0.7 + 1.5 + 4.5 + 5.1 + 9.5 + 11.3 + 12.4 + 28.1 + 34.5 + 13.6 = 124.7

(c) Chennai received maximum rainfall in the month of November. The North-East Monsoon winds after crossing the Bay of Bengal gather enough moisture. As they, strike the Coromandal coast, they bring heavy rainfall to Chennai and Tamil Nadu in the month of November.

(a) Annual range of temperature = 29.7 - 20.5 = 9.2

(b) Total rainfall = 0.15 + 0.15 + 0.15 + 1.5 + 2.7 + 11.4 + 16.7 + 9.0 + 13.4 + 9.0 + 2.7 + 0.3 = 67.15

(c) Pune receives maximum rainfall in the month of July because it gets its rainfall from south-west monsoon which strikes the western coast in June but the total rainfall is less because Pune lies in the rain shadow of western ghats.

(a) Annual range of temperature = 33.6 - 13.8 = 19.8

(b) Total rainfall = 2.5 + 2.1 + 1.3 + 0.8 + 1.3 + 7.7 + 17.9 + 18.4 + 12.3 + 1.0 + 0.2 + 1.0 = 66.5

(c) Delhi receives maximum rainfall in August as it gets its rainfall from south-west monsoons which reaches Delhi by that time.

(a) Annual range of temperature = 30.6 - 19.4 = 11.2

(b) Total rainfall = 0.7 + 2.8 + 3.6 + 4.8 + 14.5 + 30.2 + 31.8 + 32.3 + 25.1 + 10.6 + 1.8 + 0.4 = 158.6

(c) Kolkata receives maximum rainfall in August as it gets rainfall from the Bay of Bengal Branch of the monsoon which reaches the eastern coast (Calcutta) by then.

Question 34

Give reasons for the following:

• Mumbai gets more rainfall than Pune
• The moisture laden winds passing over Rajasthan do not saturate.
• S.W. monsoon withdraws from India in October/November.
• Mumbai is located on the western coast of India, while Pune is located further inland. The Western Ghats obstruct the South West Monsoon winds. Mumbai lies on the windward side of Western Ghats and receives heavy rainfall from South West Monsoon. Pune lies on the leeward side of Western Ghats and hence, receives very less rainfall.
• The moisture laden winds passing over Rajasthan do not saturate because the heat in the desert region increases their capacity to hold moisture.
• By 1st September, with the apparent movement of the sun towards south, the low pressure in central India starts weakening, and is no longer able to attract the monsoon winds towards land. During Autumn equinox when the sun shines directly over Equator, the high pressure begins to build over mainland and subsequently with low pressure over the sea, S.W. monsoon withdraws from India in October/November.

Question 35

Answer in one word :

• Withdrawal of SW monsoon.
• Low pressure depressions during winter in North West India.
• Land and sea breeze on a large scale.
• Retreating Monsoon
• Western disturbance
• Monsoon Winds

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Physical Risk - Risk Management - Transition Risk

India: A Case Study in Climate Mitigation and Adaptation

This article explores the difficult trade-offs that need to be made between the competing claims of climate mitigation, adaptation, and economic development..

Thursday, September 14, 2023

By Maxine Nelson

This article has been extensively updated, incorporating new COP 27 commitments, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) statements and current green bond issuance. It was originally published Oct. 18, 2021.

After decades of population growth and economic development, India is now the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. In addition, India is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change due to its geography and dependence on agriculture.

It has been estimated that if emissions are not significantly reduced, India could suffer economic losses of USD 35 trillion . Indeed, much of India has been experiencing annual heatwaves followed by intense flooding, and in 2021 alone it experienced even more  extreme weather events — including cyclones and a glacier collapse. Thus, India makes a thought-provoking case study for policymakers and risk professionals given the difficult trade-offs that need to be made between the competing claims of climate mitigation, adaptation and economic development.

Climate Change’s Effect on India

The banking regulator, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) , explains that “India has witnessed changes in climatic patterns in line with the rest of the world… the rainfall pattern, particularly with respect to the [south west monsoon] SWM, which provides around 75 percent of the annual rainfall, has undergone significant changes. Moreover, the occurrence of extreme weather events like floods/unseasonal rainfall, heat waves and cyclones has increased during the past two decades, and data reveal that some of the key agricultural states in India have been the most affected by such events.”

A more recent, detailed RBI study points out that “it is the increased frequency of extreme weather occurrences that is breaking the back of our capability to cope with natural disasters.” As shown by India’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — the actions it has committed to take to reduce its emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change — it is among the most vulnerable countries in the world to the impact of accelerated sea level rise from global warming. This is due to its long coastline, large number of islands and population of 170 million living in coastal regions.

The RBI also notes that precipitation and temperature — the two key climate indicators — “play a crucial role in the overall health of the Indian economy.” As well as affecting food production, the extreme weather in agricultural states impacts employment and GDP, with approximately 44% of the working population employed in agriculture and allied sectors which contribute about 20% of GDP, according to M.K. Jain, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank . Several challenges confronting Indian agriculture, including diminishing and degrading natural resources and unprecedented climate change, need to be tackled for the long-term sustainability and viability of Indian agriculture.

However, there is uncertainty over how large the impacts might be. The Swiss Re Institute , for example, estimates a 35% reduction in the level of India’s GDP by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced globally, and approximately a 6% GDP reduction even if the Paris Agreement goals are met. An Oxford Economics report “Estimating the Economic Impact of Global Warming” has framed the impact differently, estimating that India’s GDP could be 90% lower in 2100 than it would be if there was no climate change, suggesting that climate change has the potential to absorb all of India’s future prospective growth in income per capita. And  Deloitte  has estimated USD 35 trillion of economic losses by 2070. While these different approaches produce diverse estimates, they all show that the impact will be big and require additional investments in both mitigation and adaptation.

India’s Effect on Climate Change

Not only will the changing climate have a significant impact on India, but India is also expected to have a significant impact on the climate. Although historically it has not had high emissions, India rose to the number three spot in the national emissions rankings 15 years ago, behind China and the U.S. The RBI noted that “With the increase in population, the cumulative level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has increased, resulting in a rise of average temperature. According to a study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), India emitted 2,299 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in 2018, a rise of 4.8% over the previous year.”

Unfortunately, India’s future potential emissions are not yet aligned with the Paris Agreement goals. India’s NDCs currently correspond to temperature increases above 3°C, according to Climate Action Tracker . (You can find out more about NDCs and their place in the Paris Agreement in this  short article . ) India increased its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at COP 26, the 2021 annual meeting of the signatories of the Paris Agreement, where it pledged to cut its emissions to net zero by 2070. While this was a large increase in commitment, it isn’t yet aligned with the worldwide goal of cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Maxine Nelson

In advance of COP 27, India has again increased its commitment and pledged to a 45% reduction in GDP emissions intensity by 2030 — marking an 10% increase from the previous pledge. Any emissions reduction is helpful to mitigate climate change. However, as the pledge is based on emissions intensity and not absolute emissions, emissions can continue increasing as the economy expands. This pledge, therefore, doesn’t meet the net-zero goal of reducing emissions by 45% by 2030. Still, the effort required to overcome the challenge of rapidly expanding an economy while decreasing emissions intensity needs to be appreciated.

To further mitigate climate change, India may need to agree to reduce its emissions even more — a big task for a developing economy with average annual energy consumption of a third the global average, and per capita emissions already 10 times lower than that of the U.S., four times lower than China, and three times lower than Europe. With IPCC reports highlighting the urgency of tackling climate change quickly to reduce the loss and damage for humans and ecosystems, it is even more important that emissions reductions are ambitious.

Financing Mitigation and Adaptation

A 2021 RBI Financial Stability Report noted that climate change and the associated mitigating policy commitments are “set to reshape the macroeconomic and financial landscape”. Extensive funding is needed both to reduce future emissions and to finance the adaptation needed to manage the impacts of climate change. In their 2016 NDC, India estimated that at least USD 2.5 trillion (at 2014-15 prices) would be required for meeting its climate change actions between 2016 and 2030. And the International Energy Agency estimates that nearly 60% of India’s CO 2 emissions in the late 2030s will be coming from infrastructure and machines that do not exist today. If this investment is to be sustainable, USD 1.4 trillion extra funding (above that required for current policies) is needed over the next 20 years.

Like most of the world, green bond issuance in India — which could provide some of this funding — is currently a small proportion of all bond issuance.  The rate of issuance is increasing, however, with USD 21.6 billion of green, sustainable or social bonds issued in 2022. And in 2023, the Government of India entered the green finance market issuing USD 2 billion of green bonds to finance their spending on a range of projects including solar power, green hydrogen and afforestation. As they obtained a greenium (lower financing costs than other equivalent bonds), we should expect to see more of these issued in the future.

There are also substantial opportunities in other financial markets, such as the  development of a derivatives market   to aid adaptation via products such as:

• agricultural commodity derivatives, which can help reduce risks by enabling continuous price discovery and providing hedging
• weather derivatives, which can hedge the risks of high-probability, low-risk events

Of course, meeting the needs of climate change financing carries the usual financial risk implications of any lending. An RBI analysis shows that banks’ direct exposure to fossil fuels (through electricity, chemicals and cars) is 10% of total outstanding non-retail bank credit, so it should have a limited impact on the banking system. However, it notes that many other industries indirectly use fossil fuels and their impacts also need to be closely monitored.

Regulatory Response

The RBI has noted that policy measures such as a deepening of the corporate bond market, standardization of green investment terminology, consistent corporate reporting and removing information asymmetry between investors and recipients can make a significant contribution in addressing some of the shortcomings of the green finance market.

Like in most of the rest of the world, there is an increasing regulatory focus on climate risk. The RBI Governor has stated that guidelines will be issued about disclosure of climate-related risks, and also scenario analysis and stress testing. This followed last year’s RBI consultation which asked for inputs on a comprehensive range of topics from climate risk governance to strategy, and risk monitoring, management and mitigation at regulated entities. This consultation, in turn, built on the results of an RBI survey of banks that was also published last year. The survey found that “although banks have begun taking steps in the area of climate risk and sustainable finance, there remains a need for concerted effort and further action in this regard.” It also found that board-level engagement is inadequate, and few banks had a strategy for incorporating climate risk into their risk management framework. To see what leading climate risk firms are doing globally look at GARP’s whitepaper: “ Climate Risk Leadership: Lessons From 4 Annual Surveys .”

Given the widespread impact of climate change, it isn’t just the banking regulator that is looking at how climate risk will affect firms in its jurisdiction. In 2021, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) mandated that the largest 1,000 listed firms complete a Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report . The report asks for information like material ESG risks and opportunities and their financial implications; sustainability related targets and performance; and their greenhouse gas emissions. Companies’ value chains also need to be assessed. This requirement is being progressively rolled out from 2023 to 2027, with the largest companies also required to get assurance of their disclosures.

In addition, SEBI has altered the rules for mutual funds , allowing them to have multiple ESG schemes with different strategies; in the past, a mutual fund could only have one ESG fund. This increase in scope follows one for green debt securities , which was expanded to include bonds such as blue bonds (sustainable water management and marine sector), yellow bonds (solar energy generation and transmission), transition bonds and adaptation bonds. Both of these expansions in scope should increase financing for sustainability related initiatives.

Reflecting the fact that addressing climate change is a global problem, needing both local and global solutions, the RBI joined the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) in April 2021. The NGFS’s purpose is to strengthen the global response required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and to enhance the role of the financial system to manage risks and to mobilize capital for green and low-carbon investments. These goals align very well with the work India needs to undertake to make not just its financial system resilient to the risks from climate change, but to balance mitigation, adaptation, and economic development across the country.

Maxine Nelson , Ph.D, Senior Vice President, GARP Risk Institute, currently focusses on sustainability and climate risk management. She has extensive experience in risk, capital and regulation gained from a wide variety of roles across firms including Head of Wholesale Credit Analytics at HSBC. She also worked at the U.K. Financial Services Authority, where she was responsible for counterparty credit risk during the last financial crisis.

ESG Explained: What It Is and Why It Matters Jun 30, 2023

The 4 Main Drivers of Transition Risk, and Why the Risks Are Increasing Apr 12, 2022

Understanding the Physical Risks Associated with Climate Change Apr 27, 2022

4 Key Areas to Know About Climate Change May 18, 2023

India: A Case Study in Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Sep 14, 2023

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Essay on the Climate of India: Top 5 Essays | Geography

Here is an essay on the ‘Climate of India’ for class 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on the ‘Climate of India’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on the Climate of India

Essay Contents:

• Essay on the Impacts of Climate

1. Essay on the Introduction to Climate of India:

Most of India has a tropical or subtropical climate, with little variation in temperature between seasons. The northern plains, however, have a greater temperature range, with cooler winters and hotter summers. The mountain areas have cold winters and cool summers. As elevations increase sharply in the mountains, climate type can change from subtropical to polar within a few miles.

The climate of India defies easy generalisation, comprising a wide range of weather conditions across a large geographic scale and varied topography. Analysed according to the Koppen system, India hosts six major climatic subtypes, ranging from desert in the west, to alpine tundra and glaciers in the north, to humid tropical regions supporting rainforests in the southwest and the island territories. Many regions have starkly different microclimates. The nation has four seasons – winter (January and February), summer (March to May), a monsoon (rainy) season (June to September), and a post-monsoon period (October to December).

India’s unique geography and geology strongly influence its climate; this is particularly true of the Himalayas in the north and the Thar Desert in the northwest. The Himalayas act as a barrier to the frigid katabatic winds flowing down from Central Asia. Thus, North India is kept warm or only mildly cold during winter; in summer, the same phenomenon makes India relatively hot.

Although the Tropic of Cancer—the boundary between the tropics and subtropics—passes through the middle of India, the whole country is considered to be tropical. As in much of the tropics, monsoonal and other weather conditions in India are unstable – major droughts, floods, cyclones and other natural disasters are sporadic, but have killed or displaced millions. India’s long-term climatic stability may be further threatened by global warming.

2. Essay on the History of Climate:

During the Late Permian (some 260–251 Ma), the Indian subcontinent was part of the vast supercontinent Pangaea Despite its position within a high-latitude belt at 55-75°S (as opposed to its current position between 5 and 35°N), latitudes now occupied by Greenland and parts of the Antarctic Peninsula, India likely experienced a humid temperate climate with warm, frost-free weather, though with well-defined seasons. Later, India joined the southern supercontinent Gondwana, a process beginning some 550—500 Ma.

During the Late Paleozoic, Gondwana extended from a point at or near the South Pole to near the equator, where the Indian craton (stable continental crust) was positioned, resulting in a mild climate favourable to hosting high-biomass ecosystems. This is underscored by India’s vast coal reserves—much of it from the late Paleozoic sedimentary sequence—the fourth-largest reserves in the world.

During the Mesozoic, the world, including India, was considerably warmer than today. With the coming of the Carboniferous, global cooling stoked extensive glaciation, which spread northwards from South Africa towards India; this cool period lasted well into the Permian.

Tectonic movement by the Indian Plate caused it to pass over a geologic hotspot—the Reunion hotspot—now occupied by the volcanic island of Reunion. This resulted in a massive flood basalt event that laid down the Deccan Traps some 60-68 Ma, at the end of the Cretaceous period. This may have contributed to the global Cretaceous-Tertiary (K- T) extinction event, which caused India to experience significantly reduced insolation. Elevated atmospheric levels of sulphur gases formed aerosols such as sulphur dioxide and sulphuric acid, similar to those found in the atmosphere of Venus; these precipitated as acid rain.

Elevated carbon dioxide emissions also contributed to the greenhouse effect, causing warmer weather that lasted long after the atmospheric shroud of dust and aerosols had cleared. Further climatic changes 20 million years ago, long after India had crashed into the Laurasian landmass, were severe enough to cause the extinction of many endemic Indian forms. The formation of the Himalayas resulted in blockage of frigid Central Asian air, preventing it from reaching India; this made its climate significantly warmer and more tropical in character than it would otherwise have been.

3. Essay on the Climatic Regions in India:

India is home to an extraordinary variety of climatic regions, ranging from tropical in the south to temperate and alpine in the Himalayan north, where elevated regions receive sustained winter snowfall. The nation’s climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert, The Himalayas, along with the Hindu Kush mountains in Pakistan, prevent cold Central Asian katabatic winds from blowing in, keeping the bulk of the Indian subcontinent warmer than most locations at similar latitudes.

Simultaneously, the Thar Desert plays a role in attracting moisture-laden southwest summer monsoon winds that, between June and October, provide the majority of India’s rainfall. Four major climatic groupings predominate, into which fall seven climatic zones that, as designated by experts, are defined on the basis of such traits as temperature and precipitation. Groupings are assigned codes according to the Koppen climate classification system. India has a large variation in climate from region to region, due to its vast size. India experiences climate from four major climate groups.

These can be further subdivided into seven climatic types:

1. Tropical Rainy Climatic Group:

The regions belonging to this group experience persistent high temperatures which normally do not go below 18°C even in the coolest month.

There are two climatic types which fall under this group:

i. Tropical Monsoon Rain Forest:

The west coastal lowlands, the Western Ghats, and southern parts of Assam have this climate type. It is characterised by high temperatures throughout the year, even in the hills. The rainfall here is seasonal, but heavy and is above 200 cm a year. Most of the rain is received in the period from May to November, and is adequate for the growth of vegetation during the entire year. December to March is the dry months with very little rainfall. The heavy rain is responsible for the tropical wet forests in these regions, which consists of a large number of species of animals.

ii. Tropical Wet and Dry Climate:

Most of the plateau of peninsular India enjoys this climate, except a semi-arid tract to the east of the Western Ghats. Winter and early summer are long dry periods with temperature above 18°C. Summer is very hot and the temperatures in the interior low level areas can go above 45°C during May. The rainy season is from June to September and the annual rainfall is between 75 and 150 cm. Only Tamil Nadu receives rainfall during the winter months of October to December.

2. Dry Climate Group:

This group consists of regions where the rate of evaporation of water is higher than the rate of moisture received through precipitation.

It is subdivided into three climate types:

i. Tropical Semi-Arid Steppe Climate:

A long stretch of land situated to the south of Tropic of Cancer and east of the western-Ghats and the Cardamom Hills experiences this climate. It includes Karnataka, interior Tamil Nadu, western Andhra Pradesh and central Maharashtra. This region is a famine prone zone with very unreliable rainfall which varies between 40 to 75 cm annually. Towards the north of Krishna River the summer monsoon is responsible for most of the rainfall, while to the south of the river rainfall also occurs in the months of October and November.

The coldest month is December but even in this month the temperature remains between 20°C and 24°C. The months of March to May are hot and dry with mean monthly temperatures of around 32°C. The vegetation mostly comprises grasses with a few scattered trees due to the rainfall. Hence this area is not very well suited for permanent agriculture.

ii. Tropical and Sub-Tropical Desert:

Most of western Rajasthan falls under this climate type characterised by scanty rainfall. Cloud bursts are largely responsible for the all the rainfall seen in this region which is less than 30 cm. These happen when the monsoon winds penetrate this region in the months of July, August and September. The rainfall is very erratic and a few regions might not see rainfall for a couple of years. The summer months of May and June are very hot with mean monthly temperatures in the region of 35°C and highs which can sometimes reach 50°C.

During winters the temperatures can drop below freezing in some areas due to cold wave. There is a large diurnal range of about 14°C during summer which becomes higher by a few more degrees during winter. This extreme climate makes this a sparsely populated region of India.

iii. Tropical and Sub-Tropical Steppe:

The region towards the east of the tropical desert running from Punjab and Haryana to Kathiawar experiences this climate type. This climate is a transitional climate falling between tropical desert and humid sub­tropical, with temperatures which are less extreme than the desert climate.

The annual rainfall is between 30 to 65 cm but is very unreliable and happens mostly during the summer monsoon season. Maximum temperatures during summer can rise to 40°C. The vegetation mostly comprises short coarse grass. Some crops like jowar and bajra are also cultivated.

3. Humid Sub-Tropical Climate Group:

The temperature during the coldest months in regions experiencing this climate falls between 18°C and 0°C.

It has one climatic subdivision in India:

Humid Sub-Tropical with Dry Winters:

The foothills of the Himalayas, Punjab-Haryana plain adjacent to the Himalayas, Rajasthan east of the Aravaili range, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and northern part of West Bengal and Assam experience this climate. The rainfall is received mostly in the summer and is about 65 cm in the west and increases to 250 cm annually to the east and near the Himalayas.

The winters are mainly dry due to the land derived winter winds which blow down the lowlands of north India towards the Bay of Bengal. The summers are hot and temperatures can reach 46°C in the lowlands. May and June are the hottest months. Winter months are mostly dry with feeble winds. Frost occurs for a few weeks in winter. The difference in rainfall between the east and the west gives rise to a wide difference in the natural vegetation and crops.

4. Mountain Climate:

In the Himalayan mountains the temperature falls by 0.6°C for every 100 m rise in altitude and this gives rise to a variety of climates from nearly tropical in the foothills to tundra type above the snow line. One can also observe sharp contrast between temperatures of the sunny and shady slopes, high diurnal range of temperature, inversion of temperature, and variability of rainfall based on altitude.

The northern side of the western Himalayas also known as the trans- Himalayan belt is arid, cold and generally wind swept. The vegetation is sparse and stunted as rainfall is scanty and the winters are severely cold.

Most of the rainfall is in the form of snow during late winter and spring months. The area to the south of the great Himalayan range is protected from cold winds coming from interior of Asia during winter. The leeward side of the mountains receives less rain while the well exposed slopes get heavy rainfall.

The places situated between 1070 m and 2290 m altitudes receive the heaviest rainfall and the rainfall decreases rapidly above 2290 m. The great Himalayan range witnesses’ heavy snowfall during winter months of December to February at altitudes above 1500 m. The diurnal range of temperature is also high.

The states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim experience this kind of weather.

4. Essay on the Factors of Indian Climate:

It is true that the determiners of climate go much further than man-made political boundaries.

Several of the factors and phenomena governing the climate of India overstep its four walls, i.e.:

(i) Situation,

(ii) Relief,

(iii) Surface winds, and

(iv) Upper air circulation.

Locational and Relief Factors:

Situated approximately between 8 °N and 37 °N latitudes, India is divided in nearly two equal parts by the Tropic of Cancer. It stretches east-west just half way through the country.

One can notice how India is flanked by Indian Ocean in the south and girded by a towering and incessant mountain wall in the north. Such a condensed physical setting imparts it an extensive common climatic framework. One can also note the abysmal arms of the Indian Ocean – the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. They exercise moderate influence on much of the Indian subcontinent. More significantly, they work as a storehouse of severely needed moisture to this water-thirsty landmass.

The mighty Himalaya along with its lengthiness, work as a successful climatic divides. The looming mountain chain provides an indomitable defend to protect the subcontinent from the northern winds. These cold and icy winds initiate near the Arctic Circle and blows throughout Central and Eastern Asia. Thus the northern mountain wall is accountable for lending the whole of northern India a tropical touch.

Comparatively high temperatures virtually throughout the year and principally dry winters – are the two characteristic facets of a topical climate. Excluding the fringe, the Indian subcontinent does demonstrate these two over-riding characteristics.

The Surface Winds and Air Circulation:

One can start by firstly looking at the world map of the pressure belts and planetary winds. It can there be noticed that India lies in the area of land bearing winds, initiating from the subtropical high pressure belts. On the whole they are moisture-less winds, if not for the occurrence of the monsoons, India would have been a baked land or a desert. The subtropical high pressure belt of the northern hemisphere brings about everlasting winds. They blow in the direction of the equatorial low pressure belt.

While travelling towards the south, they redirect towards the right i.e. to their west. Consequently they blow from north-east towards south-west. This is why these eternal winds are known as the north-east trade winds. The German word ‘trade’ means ‘track’ and represents ‘blowing steadily in the same direction and in a constant course’. India thus lies in the belt of the north-east trades, completely lacking in moisture. This is however only half story of the Indian climatic happening. 

The air pressure does increase by stacking of air, coming down from above. But it is also a function of air temperature. The land and water bodies do not get heated precisely in a similar way. In summer the land gets more heated compared to the seas. Therefore a low pressure rises over the centre of the land masses. This occurrence is fundamentally responsible for the turnaround of wind direction, giving rise to the south­west monsoons.

Air currents vary from winds because they are located at a pretty high altitude from the earth’s surface. The motion of jet streams also touches on the climate of India. A jet stream blows rapidly in a tapered zone in the upper atmosphere. A westerly jet stream in lower stratosphere passes over south of the Himalaya during the winters. In June, it moves northwards to position itself north of the Tien Shan in Central Asia – instead, an easterly jet stream develops in approximately 25 °N.

Low pressure and freshly developed jet stream are accountable for the abrupt outburst of the monsoons in northern India. Cooling effect easterly jet stream causes rain from maritime clouds, previously lingering over this area. The unsteady equatorial oceanic air is able to form rain-bearing dark clouds, often up to an altitude of 9 km to 15 km high up into the sky. This enlightens the happening of prevalent storms, thunders and great progress of monsoons all over India, often in just eight to ten days.

The Mechanism of Monsoons:

The word monsoon, as is distinguished, has been deduced from an Arabic word ‘mausim’ that factually means ‘season’. The word monsoon, hence, refers to a season in which the wind system is wholly overturned. The moist monsoon winds, after voyaging over the equator in the Indian Ocean, gains a southwesterly direction as the area attracted towards the low pressure are located in Northwest India and Central Myanmar. The dry and hot land-bearing trades are consequently entirely swapped by sea – bearing winds, full of moisture.

Based on the dissimilarity between tropical continental air and equatorial maritime air, the meteorological definition of the monsoons is quite uncomplicated. According to them it is a total replacement of the dry hot air by the equatorial maritime air, up to an elevation of three to five kilometres over the land and water surface.

The occurrence of monsoons is certainly quite prehistoric, but its precise nature and cause are being observed only lately. The substantial breakthrough took place when it was studied at the global rather than regional level. On the whole this occurrence is limited to tropical lands, lying within 20 °N and 20 °S. But in the Indian subcontinent it is significantly regulated by the Himalayan ranges bringing the whole subcontinent under the control of these moist equatorial winds for a season varying between two to five months. It accounts for 75 to 90 per cent of the yearly rainfall, just from June to September.

The nature and system of the monsoons is understood with the help of meteorological statistics that are collected from stations on land, ships in oceans and from upper air. It was formerly assumed that monsoon was a phenomenon of surface winds. It is now known that upper air currents also play a substantial role in the mechanism of monsoon.

It has also been established that the concentration of monsoons can be largely forecast by measuring the differentiation in pressure between Tahiti (roughly 18°S and 149 °W) in French Polynesia in east Pacific and Port Darwin (12°30’S and 131″E) in Northern Territory of Australia in Indian Ocean, southeast of Indonesia.

5. Essay on the Impacts of Climate:

Change in climate is impact on natural system, Impacts on Social Systems and Impacts on human health.

The following are:

1. Impacts of Climate on Natural Systems:

Regionally and globally our climate is changing. To fully grasp the implication of a changing climate upon Earth and ourselves, we need to have an appreciation of the range of natural systems and how they are interconnected. Systems thinking are the approach of studying the interactions amongst components within the context of a whole system, as well as the interactions between systems. Earth is composed of many natural systems with numerous interactions within and between these systems. Due to this level of complexity, one small change can lead to numerous significant changes in one or more of the systems.

The main natural systems of Earth include:

i. Biological systems, i.e., individuals, species populations, and communities;

ii. Ecosystems, i.e., the interactions amongst living organisms and physical and chemical factors in the environment;

iii. Global energy budget, i.e., flow, of energy originating from the Sun into and out of Earth’s systems;

iv. Water cycle (hydrological cycle);

v. Cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and other elements or molecules (biogeochemical cycles);

vi. Rock cycle, i.e., geological processes; and the

vii. Global climate system, i.e., the interactions that create the climates and weather patterns throughout Earth.

Also, Earth can be divided into distinct physical zones or “spheres”, including the geosphere (the solid parts of Earth), the hydrosphere (the Oceans and fresh water parts), the atmosphere (the area above the surface of Earth containing gases), and the biosphere (the living component). The natural systems often involve energy flowing and elements or compounds cycling through these spheres.

Climate change is an example of how one change can lead to multiple impacts. As the average global temperature (i.e., global warming) increases due to an enhanced greenhouse effect, there are numerous and far ranging effects within the global climate system. These changes within the global climate system are collectively called climate change.

They include – increased evaporation of fresh and ocean water leading to increased atmospheric moisture; change in the amount and pattern of precipitation; variable temperature changes in specific climatic areas; change in overall distribution of normal weather events; increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events; change in wind intensity; and warming of oceans resulting in rising sea level.

Because the natural systems of Earth, including the global climate system, are complex and interconnected, the impact of changing one aspect of one system reverberates throughout all of Earth’s systems.

The impacts of climate change on natural systems are far ranging. For example, the impact on the water cycle includes changes in the size of fresh water reservoirs as seen by the melting of glaciers, ice caps, and permafrost and the evaporation of lakes; and increased amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, which affects the amount of solar energy that is reflected back into space or absorbed within the atmosphere and increases the amount of precipitation. These changes can then have an effect on the global energy budget and subsequently the global climate system leading to further climate change.

In regards to ecosystems, the changes in regional climates are effectively changes in the abiotic components. Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns lead to shifts in the timing of seasons and thus reproductive timing of plants and animals as well as length of growing season.

Shifts in water availability and temperatures affect species distribution (e.g., location or range where found) and abundance (e.g., numbers of individuals in populations) due to loss/expansion of suitable habitat (e.g., melting permafrost in arctic). Some species may become extinct if they cannot adapt at a similar rate to the changes occurring, resulting in a loss of biodiversity, loss of pollinators and seed dispersers, and biological control of pests.

As a result of the many and varied effects of climate change on natural systems, there will also be many ways in which human systems are impacted. Our resource industries, food and health systems, production and manufacturing systems, and infrastructure all will be affected.

2. Impacts on Social Systems:

Changes in vulnerability depend on trajectories of social and technological innovation and on effective forms of risk communication. Variation in innovation systems can be identified at several levels, allowing for downscaling from national to regional levels. Institutional regimes and governance structures influence the adaptation capacities of social systems. Established patterns of science-policy interactions are important channels through which risk perception and communication is formed. These social science concepts can be used to develop typologies that can feed into long-term monitoring data.

Coastal zones are regions of dense interaction between natural and socio-economic changes. Regional vulnerabilities and dynamics depend on risk perception of social systems and their adaptive capabilities. Severe science gaps exist in the analysis and evaluation of impacts of climate changes and geo-risks related to regional economic, socio-demographic and cultural systems and different spatial structures like agricultural land-use systems or urban and port areas.

Referring to the LOICZ science plan we contribute to following research questions – Which regional risks (will) arise from socio-economic and natural change due to the intensity and predictability of climatic and human forcing of global change? What are the time lags between predictability of risks and processes of regional adaptation and mitigation? What are political, economic, cultural and social incentives or barriers for stakeholder involvement and participation?

International Security:

The various impacts of climate change as found in other the major research areas (geo-risks, terrestrial, marine and urban systems) are translated in socially relevant consequences, which are projected on a political map. This will allow investigating the implications on international security (migration across borders, potential conflicts caused by regionally uneven distribution of scarce resources, etc.) and possible conflicts from non-compliance with international agreements (e.g., Kyoto Protocol, Biodiversity Convention).

3. Impacts on Human Health and Comfort:

The nature of projected climate-related changes and variability, and the characteristics of arctic populations, means that impacts of climate change on the health of arctic residents will vary considerably depending on such factors as age, gender, socio-economic status, lifestyle, culture, location, and the capacity of local health infrastructure and systems to adapt.

It is more likely that populations living in close association with the land, in remote communities, and those that already face a variety of health-related challenges will be most vulnerable to future climate changes. Health status in many arctic regions has changed significantly over the past decades and the climate, weather, and environment have played, and will continue to play a significant role in the health of residents in these regions.

Direct health impacts may result from changes in the incidence of extreme events (avalanches, storms, floods, rockslides) which have the potential to increase the numbers of deaths and injuries each year. Direct impacts of winter warming in some regions may include a reduction in cold-induced injuries such as frostbite and hypothermia and a reduction in cold stress. As death rates are higher in winter than summer, milder winters in some regions could reduce the number of deaths.

Direct negative impacts of warming could include increased heat stress in summer and accidents associated with unpredictable ice and weather conditions. Indirect impacts may include increased mental and social stress related to changes in the environment and lifestyle, potential changes in bacterial and viral proliferation, vector-borne disease outbreaks, and changes in access to good quality drinking water sources.

Also, some regions may experience a change in the rates of illnesses resulting from impacts on sanitation infrastructure. Impacts on food security through changes in animal distribution and accessibility have the potential for significant impacts on health as shifts from a traditional diet to a more “western” diet are known to be associated with increased risk of cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Increased exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation among arctic residents has the potential to affect the response of the immune system to disease, and to influence the development of skin cancer and non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as the development of cataracts.

However, as the current incidence rates for many of these ailments are low in small arctic communities it is difficult to detect, let alone predict, any trends in their future incidence. The presence of environmental contaminants threatens the safety of traditional food systems, which are often the central fabric of communities.

The projected warming scenarios will affect the transport, distribution, and behaviour of environmental contaminants and thus human exposure to these substances in northern regions.

These changes are all taking place within the context of cultural and socio-economic change and evolution. They therefore represent another of many sources of stress on societies and cultures as they affect the relationship between people and their environment, which is a defining element of many northern cultures. Through potential increases in factors influencing acculturative stress and mental health, climate-related changes may further stress communities and individual psychosocial health.

Communities must be prepared to identify, document, and monitor changes in their area in order to adapt to shifts in their local environment. The basis of this understanding is the ability to collect, organize, and understand information indicative of the changes taking place and their potential impacts. A series of community indicators are proposed to support this development of monitoring and decision-making ability within northern regions and communities.

Related Articles:

• Essay on Tropical Cyclones: Top 5 Essays | Geography
• Essay on Global Warming and Climate Change
• Essay on Cyclone: Top 6 Essays | Natural Disasters | Geography
• Essay on the Atmosphere: Top 6 Essays | Geography

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• Essay on Seasons in India

Indian Weather Essay

All the seasons of India are divided among 12 months of the calendar. They are divided among the twelve months of the calendar of two months for each season. Every season has its beauty and specialty that make it noticeable. Sometimes due to some environmental issue, this period may differ.

The meteorological department of India divided the months of a year according to the seasons as follows:

Summer (March, April, and May)

Monsoon (June to September)

Post Monsoon (October to November)

Winter (December, January, and February)

By knowing the month's distribution, one can easily understand the beauty of the season in India.

Introduction to India

India is one of those countries which sees four types of seasons. Each season is different due to its nature. However, the reason behind this diversification of these seasons depends on various factors such as latitude, longitude, topography, etc. Below are the two sample essays on Seasons in India which students can refer to for further use. Apart from the name of Seasons In India essay, these can also be referred to as weather essay, paragraph on seasons, etc. So, whatever the questions would be in your question paper, you must not get confused.

Long ‘Seasons in India’ Essay

India is a vast country with various geographical features and conditions. Hence it is important for all the kids to be aware of what are the seasons in India. When it comes to seasons, India is extremely diverse in nature. There are mainly four seasons that can be witnessed across the country i.e. Summer, Monsoon, Post-monsoon, and Winter.

Duration: Three months

Time of the Year: April to June

Summer in India generally stays for three to four months, which starts from April (sometimes in March) and continues to June. This season excites the kids the most as they get a month-long vacation. Many schools or authorities organize summer camps for the kids in various places in India which are comparatively cold. Besides, everyone can enjoy eating ice-cream and various other fun foods. It is the longest season. During this season, nature gets brighter and temperatures soar high. Lots of flowers and fruits bloom at this time. Sometimes, the season's temperature gets very high due to geographical reasons. The temperature is highest in April and May. In that season, the temperature varies from 32 to 40 degrees Celsius. In summer, the days appear longer than night.

Duration: Three to four months

Time of the Year: June end to September

Monsoon means rain, which delights the farmers across the countries. The first monsoon in India hits the state of Kerala. The Indian Monsoons typically start between the second week of June and extend until September. In India,  most precipitation is caused by the southwest monsoons. The two origins of the Indian monsoon are the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian sea. The south-west part of India also witnesses heavy downpour every year. However, following the scorching heat of summer, this season brings relief to everyone’s life including the farmers. India's agriculture is highly based on the monsoon season. But it has its downside too. Many areas get flooded due to deluge which damages a lot of crops and creates difficulty in a farmer’s life.

Post-Monsoon

Duration: Two Months

Time of the Year: October, November

Post-monsoon is the most pleasant time of the year, which is nothing but a transition phase between monsoon and winter. During this time, some of the regions in India witnessed rainfall. This time is referred to as Autumn also in some parts of India. The months of October and November cover the post-monsoon season. This season marks the mixture between a wet and dry season. The temperature slowly starts getting low during this transition. However, it is the shortest season of all. Lots of festivals take place during this season such as Durga Puja (Navratri), Diwali, Bhaidooj, Halloween, etc.

Duration: Two to three months

Time of the Year: December, January (sometimes in February)

As the time moves fast towards winter, days become shorter and nights become longer. Temperature can be as low as minus 5 degrees Celsius at some places (such as the extreme northern regions in India). People wear woolen clothes to keep themselves warm. Some travel to sea-shore areas to enjoy the pleasant weather. This season is the season of cheerful festivals like Christmas, the new year, and various foods. This season's picnic is perfect. Some also travel to high altitude areas to experience snow falls like Uttarakhand, Kashmir, etc. The overall temperature increases as January ends and moves towards February.

Short Essay on ‘Seasons in India’

India is well known for its diversified nature and climate. Every year the country witnesses mainly four major seasons i.e. summer, monsoon, post-monsoon, winter. Each season has its own charm and characteristics. The duration of each season ranges from three to four months. In a nutshell, India is a tropical region.

The summer season mainly starts in April and stays until the month of June. Due to the country’s tropical nature, the summer season gets extremely hot in some parts of India such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh experiences the scorching heat of the summer sun. The temperature ranges from 30 to 40 degrees Celsius during this season and the length of the day is generally longer than the length of the night. The highest temperature during the summer season could be 50 to 52 degrees Celsius.

Monsoon follows the summer season and brings relief to everyone’s life. Monsoon stays for three to four months. It begins at the end of June and stays until September. The origins of the Indian monsoon are basically the Arabian sea and the Bay of Bengal. The first monsoon rains in India are witnessed in the state of Kerala. Some other regions too experienced heavy downpours, especially the south-western part of India (Mumbai, Nashik, Nagpur, etc).

There comes the post-monsoon season which stays for two seasons approximately i.e. October and November. Some also refer to this season as Autumn in India. This is the transition phase between the monsoon and the winter season. This transition period brings very comfortable and pleasant weather which prepares everyone for the dry winter season. Some regions might witness a little bit of deluge at this time.

Thereafter, this season is followed by the most awaited season - winter. The temperature can go down to 10 to 15 degrees Celsius in this season. The extreme north and north-eastern region of India also witnesses heavy snowfall in this time of the year, i.e., Kashmir, Uttarakhand, etc, and other northern regions see an extreme fall in the temperature. The temperature might be around minus 5 to 5 degrees Celsius. The coldest months in the entire year are December and January. As opposed to summer, the season has the longest nights compared to the days.

Effect on Season Change

Due to heavy pollution, some disturbances have been created in India's generally smooth seasonal cycles. Various activities like urbanization, industrialization, deforestation,  etc., have affected the seasonal changes in India. Excessive deforestation for residential buildings and industries to cope with the growing demands.  People have led to the loss of valuable green forests in the country.  By this, a disturbance is caused in the rainfall pattern and has led to floods and drought in various countries.

Causes of Effect on Indian Climate

The cause of climate change is happening  as follows:

Burning of fossil fuels

Industrialization

Deforestation

Emission of greenhouse gasses

Urbanization

Due to the change in rainfall and temperature patterns, people face extreme climatic conditions. Indian monsoons lead to floods in parts of the northeast and northwest while the southern parts experience drought to the extreme levels. These changes have been confusing scientists and meteorological experts for a long time. It is difficult to identify exact reasons for these adversities. These changes can be permanent if we will not take a severe step as soon as possible.

In a nutshell, India is one of those beautiful countries which witness the diversity of nature. Each region is popular for its various conditions of nature. Each season is beautiful in its way and Indians are lucky to experience such wide ranges of nature at its best.

FAQs on Essay on Seasons in India

1. What are the Seasons in India?

There are mainly four seasons in India i.e. Summer, Monsoon, Post-monsoon, Winter.

2. Which Months are the Coldest in India?

December and January are the coldest months in India.

3. Which Months is the Post-Monsoon Season?

Generally, the post-monsoon season comes between monsoon and winter. Hence, October and November are the two months that experience the transition.

4. Why is the season change essential in India?

The season change is essential in India because everything depends upon it. According to the season change, the various crops also grow at different times. AS north to south, there are various geographical issues for that season change is essential. There is uniqueness and beauty in every season. So every season has its reason of importance.

5. How does the season affect human life?

For the variety of every season, people have to change their regular habits. They can not continue with the same in every season. For example, One may have to wear lite cloth, eat incredible food or drinks, and feel irritated in scorching heat in Summer. On the other hand, one must wear woolen clothes, eat hot food, drink, and feel happy in sunlight in the winter season. In the monsoon season, people have to survive with colds and coughs. There are also various effects that may occur due to season change.

6. What is the reason behind season change?

As India is situated in the tropical part of the earth, it faces maximum season changes. Besides that, we all know that the world moves around the sun and has a tilted rotation axis. The different parts of the planet get different light and heat from the sun, which is the main reason behind season change.

7. How to write an essay on season change?

Season change is one of the favorite topics for children. So one can follow some simple steps to write a good and attractive essay about season change. First, one must write an overview of the seasons of India. After that, they may include detailed information about seasons. In the next step, one may include the case and effect on season change. At last, the student must include the conclusion. One may also add some exciting content to their essay as they want.

8. How can a student get help on writing essays easily?

Nowadays, everything can be found on the internet. Especially about the study of different topics, there are thousands of online learning websites where one can get help in any subject or topic. But choosing the best is the priority. Vedantu is one of the best learning platforms where students can get help on any topic. Not only that, but Vedantu also provides courses, study material, online classes, and thousands of blogs and videos for study. All the students of ICSE, CBSE as well as State Boards can get maximum help from Vedantu.

ICSE Class 10 Geography Goyal Brothers Solutions Chapter 4 Climate of India

Check the below ICSE Class 10 Geography Goyal Brothers Solutions Chapter 4 Climate of India with Questions and Answers Pdf free download. Students can also read The Climate of India Class 10 ICSE Solutions .

Question 1. Name the factors affecting the climate of a place. Answer: The climate of a place is mainly affected by the temperature, rainfall, atmospheric pressure and direction of winds.The climate of the Indian subcontinent, is greatly influenced by two factors:

• Tropic of cancer (23 1/2°N) dividing the country into two halves-North Temperature Zone and South Tropical Zone.
• Great Himalayan Range separating the Indian subcontinent form the east of Asia.

Question 2. Name type of climate in India. Answer: Tropical Monsoon Type of climate in India.

Question 3. What is the chief characteristic feature of the tropical monsoon type climate? Answer: The important features of tropical monsoon are:

• Most of the country gets rain from the South-West Monsoon.
• The rain is unevenly distributed.
• It is erratic and unpredictable.
• It is seasonal mostly coming in rainy season.
• Presence of mountain. It is mainly orographic in nature.
• Monsoon rains have great effect on our economy.

Question 4. What are onshore winds and offshore winds? Answer: Onshore winds – Onshore wind is a gentle wind blowing from sea toward land, that develops over bodies near land due to difference in air pressure. Offshore winds- Winds starts blowing from the high-pressure area over the land to low -pressure area over the sea in a general North-East direction.

Question 5. State the importance of Monsoon season in India. Answer: Importance of the Monsoon season in India:

• India’s entire agriculture calendar and the total life of the India people revolve around the monsoons.
• Indian agriculture is gamble of monsoons and the production of agriculture depends on timely arrival of monsoons.
• Most of the rivers of India get their water from the monsoons.

Question 6. Name a few local winds that pass through India. Answer: First local wind is known as‘100’ (hot wind) along the northern plain of India due to extremely rising temperatures pushed by the trade winds. Second local wind is known as ‘Kal-Baisakhi’ (The month of April causing death) in W.Bengal and Assam, where due to rapid cyclonic winds with high speed cause maximum loss and deaths in this area. These are called Nor’westers in geographical term, as the winds come very fast from northwestern direction towards the eye of the cyclones.

Question 7. Which is the more important branch – the Arabian Sea Branch or the Bay of Bengal Branch? Why? Answer: The Arabian Sea Branch is the more important branch than the Bay of Bengal. Due to following reasons: –

• The Arabian Sea Branch is much larger than the Bay of Bengal.
• The whole of the Arabian Sea branch is used up by the entire country whereas only part of the Bay of Bengal branch enters India through North-East India, the rest goes toward Myanmar and Thailand.

Question 8. Which is the first State to receive the monsoon and the last to see it retreat in India? Answer: Kerala is the first State to receive the monsoon and Kachch, Eastern Rajasthan, U.R, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Eastern Punjab are the last to see it retreat in India.

Question 9. State two important characteristic features of the Indian monsoons. Answer: Following are the characteristic features of the Indian monsoons:

• Most of the rainfalls during the months of June-September.
• During the season it also causes heavy downpours. Such heavy downpour results in soil erosion.
• Our monsoons are unreliable, uncertain, erratic, undependable.
• It is orographic in nature.

Question 10. Name the different seasons of India, stating the months when they are experienced. The different seasons of India are:

• The Hot Dry Season (March to May)
• The rainy season or the season of south-west monsoon. (June to September)
• The season of the retreating south-west monsoon (October to November) ^
• The cold season or the season of the north-east monsoon (December to February).

Question 11. What is the meaning of the word ‘monsoon’? Answer: The term ‘Monsoon’ is dervied from an Arabic word Mausinm which means season. – Or Monsoons are periodic seasonal winds. They develop because of differential heating as well as cooling of the land and sea.

Question 12. How are monsoon winds different from the land and sea breezes? Answer:

• A land and sea breeze occurs on a daily basis as the land gets hotter than the sea during the day and cooler at night.
• A monsoon occurs on an annual basis as the interior of a continents gets hotter than the ocean in summer and colder in winter.

Question 13. Why are there great variations in India’s climate? Answer: There are great variations in the climate India’s due to

• The vast latitudinal expanse.
• The varied topographical features.
• Size of land.
• Distance from the sea.

Question 14. Give reasons to justify that Himalayas act as a perfect climatic divide. Answer: The Himalayas act as a perfect climate divide, there are following reasons:

• The great Himalayas range obstructs the bitter cold winds from Siberia from entering the Indian subcontinent.
• The Himalayan range intercepts the rain-bearing south-west monsoon winds, forcing them to shed their moisture, resulting in heavy rainfall in the Northest and Indo Gangetic Plain.

Question 15. Which winds are responsible for the rainfall experienced over the greater part of India? Answer: South-West monsoon winds are responsible for the rainfall experienced over the greater part of India.

Question 16. During which part of the year is this rain experienced? Answer: Meghalaya

Question 17. How are the sources of rainfall in the north-west part of India different from the rainfall experienced on the coastal areas of Eastern India in Winter? Answer: The rainfall in the North-West part of India is mainly caused due to Arabian Sea-branch of South-West summer monsoon while the rainfall experienced on the coastal areas of Eastern India in caused by the cyclonic winds of North-East monsoons.

Question 18. Why does Kanyakumari experience an equable climate? [1998] Answer: Kanyakumari is located at 8 degree North. It is also closer to the Equator. It receives vertical rays of the sun at the Equator hence, there is not much difference in temperature here. So we can say Kanyakumari experiences equable/oceanic/ maritime influence.

Question 19. Why does central Maharashtra receives scanty rainfall. Answer: Most of central Maharashtra has only scanty rainfall because it lies in the rain shadow area of the Western Ghats.

Question 20. Why is western part of India a desert region? Answer: Western part of India or Thar is desert due to following reasons:

• Thar experiences very little summer rain.
• By the time, the Bay of Bengal branch of the South-West Monsoon reaches Thar after passing through the Ganga Valley, it has little or no moisture. Only windward side of the Aravalli Hills receive a little rain but no rain in Thar as it is in rain shadow area.
• As the Aravalli Hills lie parallel to the Arabian Sea branch of the south-west monsoon, so it does not give much rainfall.
• North-East monsoon does not give much winter rainfalls.
• Thar lacks water sources and humidity is very low in summer.

Question 21. What are western disturbances? Answer: These are shallow cyclonic depressions originating over Mediterranean sea, disturbing fine weather conditions in north-western parts of India during winter season.

Question 22. Name one part of India that has its rainfall in winter and summer as well. Answer: One part that experiences rainfall both in winter and summer- Tamil Nadu Coast/ Coromandel Coast.

Question 23. Explain how retreating monsoon winds are different from the north-east trades. Answer: The Retreating Monsoon or South-West Monsoon (October- November): By 1 st September, with the apparent movement of the sun towards south the low pressure in central India starts weakening, and is no longer able to attract the monsoon winds towards land.

During Autumn equinox when the sun shines directly over Equator, the high pressure begins to build over mainland and subsequently with low pressure over the sea while the North-East Trade (December to March). The cold weather season commences at the end of November and continues till march. Clear sky, pleasant weather, low temperature and humidity, high range of temperature and slow northern winds are the chief characteristics of this season.

Question 24. Name a place in India which receives the heaviest rainfall. To which state does this place belong? Answer: The place in India which receives the maximum rainfall is Mawsynram in Meghalaya

Question 25. Name the winds that are responsible for causing this rain i in the above question? Answer: South-West monsoon winds is responsible for the rainfall experienced over the greater part of India.

Question 26. What is meant by ‘rain shadow area’? Give an example and state the mountains which are responsible for the rain shadow area. Answer: The area which experiences scanty rainfall due to the existence of the mountains parallel to the monsoon winds is called ‘rain shadow area’. The part of the western Rajasthan is the rain shadow area as it is located at the Aravali ranges lying parallel to the direction of the moisture containing winds.

Question 27. Name the winds that bring rain to the Tamil Nadu coast? Answer: North-east trade winds bring rain to the Tamil Nadu coast.

Question 28. Give reasons : (a) In spite of Aravalis Range Rajasthan receives very less rain. Answer:

• The Aravalis lie parallel to the direction of the South-West monsoon Arabian sea streams, so these hills do not intercept these winds.
• Rajasthan lies on the leeward side of the Aravalis.

(b) The Malabar coast has less rainy months but more rain than the Coromandal coast. Answer: The Malabar coast lies on the western coast on the windward side of the Western Ghats and gets the full impact of the southwest monsoon from June-September only where as the Coromandel Coast experiences less rainfall as it receives rain from the retreating monsoon during October-November and the Northeast Monsoons which do not bring much rainfall but is spread over a long period.

(c) Punjab has three sources of rain. Answer: Punjab is the state that receives rainfall from three different sources and the sources are:

• Northest Retreating Monsoons
• Westerly depressions and
• Southwest Monsoons or cyclonic disturbances originating in the Mediterranean Sea.

(d) Mawsynram receives more rain than Shilong. Answer: Mawsynram lies in the Khasi hills in Meghalaya and gets more rainfall from the Bay of Bengal branch of the summer monsoon. Here the hills are funnle shaped so the moisture laiden monsoon have to take a sudden rise which cause heavy rain (1221 cm). On the other hand Shilong lies in the rain shadow area of the Khasi hills and gets less rainfall.

Question 29. Explain how is the winter rain caused. How is the rain beneficial? Answer: The causes of winter rain are:

• In Tamil Nadu, the north-east monsoon winds pick up moisture from the Bay of Bengal and bring rain.
• The cause of the rain in all the northern states are the western disturbances that originate in the Mediterranean Sea. Benefit of Winter Rain. This rainfall is cyclonic rain and is beneficial to crops, especially wheat and barely.

• Annual Rnage of temperature = 20.5 °C – 29.7°C
• Total Annual Rainfall = 0.15 + 0.15 + 0.15 +1.5 +2.7 + 11.4 + 16.7 + 9.0 + 13.4 + 9.0 + 2.7 + 0.3 = 67.150 m
• Pune receive maximum rainfall in July because it lies on the leeward side of the Western Ghats which is a rainshadow region due to which the Arabian Sea branch of SW monsoon loses its moisture contant after passing over the ghats.

(b) Chennai

• Annual Range of temperature = 24.5°C – 32.5°C
• Total Annual Rainfall = 2.8 + 0.7+0.7 +1.5 + 4.5 + 5.1 + 9.5 + 11.3 + 12.4 + 28.1 + 34.5 + 13.6 = 124.6 cm
• Chennai receive its maximum rainfall in November-December from the north-east monsoon winds which blow over the bay of Bengal and meet with the moist wind of the retreating monsoons.

(c) New Delhi

• Annual Range of temperature = 13.8°C – 3 3.6°C
• Total Annual Rainfall

• Delhi receives maximum rainfall in August from the South West Monsson Arabian sea branch These winds blow from the South West and hence Delhi receive rainfall late in August.

(d) Kolkata

• Annual Range of temperature = 19.4°C – 30.6°C
• Total Annual Rainfall = 0.7 + 2.8 + 3.6 + 4.8 +14.5 + 30.2 + 31.8 + 32.3 + 25.1 + 10.6 + 1.8 + 0.4 = 158.6 cm
• Kolkata receives maximum rainfall in the month of June to August because It lie in the lower Ganga plain/valley. So when the South West Monsoon Bay of Bengal branch comes up the power Ganga Valley it sheds its moisture.

Question 34. Give reasons for the following: (i) Mumbai gets more rainfall than Pune. Answer: Mumbai receives more rainfall than Pune because it is located on the coast and Pune is in the interior.

Mumbai lies on the windward side ofWestem Ghats while Pune is located on the leeward side. Windward refers to the direction from which the rain-bearing south west monsoon winds approach the land from sea. Lee ward refers to the region that is shielded from these winds by a natural barrier, in this case, the hills of Western Ghats. This region is drier and is referred to as rain-shadow due to this feature.

(ii) The moisture laden winds passing over Rajasthan do not saturate. Answer: During the summer the temperature of the place is so high that the monsoon winds get dry and do not cause rain and do not saturate.

(iii) S.W. monsoon withdraws from India in October/ November. Answer: The withdrawl of the South-West monsoon is a much slower process than reversal of the process. As the South-West Monsoon had travelled towards the north, now it retreats towards the South. This process starts in October and is over by the end of November. Or By 1st September, with the apparent movement of the Sun towards south, the low pressure in central India starts weakening, and is no longer able to attract the monsoon winds towards land. During Autumn equinox when the sun shines directly Over Equator, the high pressure begins to build over mainland and subsequently with low pressure over the sea, the South-West Monsoon begins to withdraw from the mainland of India.

Question 35. Answer in one word: (i) Withdrawal of SW monsoon. (ii) Low pressure depressions during winter in North West India. (iii) Land and sea breeze on a large scale. Answer:

• Retreating Monsoons
• Western Disturbance

Goyal Brothers Prakashan Class 10 ICSE Geography Solutions

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Climate Change: Causes and Effects

Last updated on April 2, 2024 by ClearIAS Team

India ranks fifth globally in terms of climate change vulnerability. Due to climate change, India suffered losses of almost 37 billion dollars in 2018 (almost twice what it lost between 1998-2017).

According to MIT, 78 out of India’s 89 urban regions will experience a considerable increase in flash floods if preindustrial temperatures are increased by 2° Celsius.

Sea level rise and stronger cyclones have already been brought on by an increase in sea surface temperature.

Table of Contents

What Is Climate Change?

Climate change means a long-term shift in temperature and weather patterns that may be natural such as through variations in the solar cycle or a result of anthropogenic activities such as carbon emission.

• Since the 1800s, human activities, primarily the combustion of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas have been the primary cause of climate change.
• Fossil fuel combustion produces greenhouse gas emissions that serve as a blanket around the earth, trapping heat from the sun and increasing temperatures.
• Carbon dioxide and methane are two prominent greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change. These are produced, for instance, by burning coal or gasoline.
• Carbon dioxide can also be released during forest and land clearing and Methane is emitted primarily by waste landfills. Among all, the major emitters are energy, industry, transportation, buildings, agriculture, and land use.

Key Findings Related to Climate

• China is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide which comprises 30.60% of the CO2 emission worldwide. China is followed by the USA and India.
• The Earth is now about 1.1°C warmer than it was in the 1800s. The commitment made under the Paris Agreement may not be met.
• By the end of the century, the temperature might rise by as much as 4.4°C if carbon dioxide emissions continue on their current course.
• The levels of greenhouse gases rose to a new height in 2019. The amount of carbon dioxide was 148% of preindustrial levels.
• While sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet, and glaciers have decreased over the same period and permafrost temperatures have climbed, the Arctic has warmed at least twice as fast as the global average.
• Between 2020 and 2030, the world’s production of fossil fuels must drop by around 6% to maintain a 1.5°C trajectory.

Also read:  Planetary Boundaries

Causes of Climate Change

Several anthropogenic activities induce harm to the environment. A few important of them are-

Power Generation

• Burning fossil fuels to provide power and heat accounts for a sizable portion of world emissions. Burning coal, oil, or gas releases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, which are still used to produce the majority of power.
• Only a little over a quarter of the world’s electricity is generated by renewable energy sources including wind, solar, and other natural resources.

Manufacturing and Industrial goods

• The manufacturing/industrial sector is one of the leading global producers of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Emissions from manufacturing and industry are mostly the result of burning fossil fuels to create energy for the production of items like textiles, electronics, plastics, cement, iron, and steel.
• Gases are also released during mining and other industrial activities, as well as during construction.
• Some products are also manufactured from chemicals derived from fossil fuels i.e., plastic products.

Deforestation

• A per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions is caused by deforestation, along with agriculture and other changes in land use.
• As per an estimation, nearly 12 million hectares of forests are burned annually. Cutting down forests to make way for farms, pastures, or for other purposes also increases emissions.
• Forests absorb carbon dioxide, hence cutting or destroying forests reduces nature’s capacity to absorb emissions.

Transportation

• Fossil fuels are typically used to power transportation machines. As a result, emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, are greatly influenced by the transportation sector.
• In addition, statistics suggest that over the next few years, energy use for transportation will rise significantly.

Food Production

• In addition to deforestation and clearing land for agriculture and grazing, digestion by cows and sheep, production and use of fertilizers and manure, and the use of energy to run farm machinery or fishing boats, typically with fossil fuels, all contribute to the production of food.

Powering Buildings

• Over half of all electricity used worldwide is consumed by residential and commercial structures.
• Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from buildings have increased over the past few years as a result of rising energy demand for heating and cooling, rising air conditioner ownership, and increased electricity use for lighting, appliances, and connected devices.

Also read: State of Global Climate Report 2023

Effects of Climate Change

Climate change has devastating impacts on us and the environment. The major effects are-

Increase in Temperature

• The global surface temperature rises together with greenhouse gas concentrations. The most recent ten years, 2011 to 2020, have been the warmest on record.
• Higher temperatures worsen heat-related illnesses and make it more challenging to work outside. When the weather is hotter, wildfires start more easily and spread more quickly.

More Severe Storms

• In many areas, destructive storms have increased in intensity and frequency. More moisture evaporates as temperatures rise , aggravating extremely heavy rains and flooding and resulting in more severe storms.
• The warming ocean has an impact on both the intensity and frequency of tropical storms. Warm ocean surface waters are the primary source of cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons.

Frequent Drought

• Water availability is changing due to climate change, becoming more scarce in many places. In already water-stressed areas, global warming makes water shortages worse.
• It also increases the danger of ecological and agricultural droughts, which can harm crops and make ecosystems more vulnerable.

Warming and Rising Ocean

• The ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, keeping it out of the atmosphere. However, additional carbon dioxide causes the water to become more acidic, endangering coral reefs and marine life.
• It is the property of water that it expands when becomes warmer, therefore as the ocean warms, its volume will rise. Sea levels increase as a result of ice sheet melting, endangering coastal and island communities.

Loss of Species

• Both animals on land and in the ocean are at risk from climate change. As the temperatures rise, these risks rise as well.
• The rate of extinction on the planet is 1,000 times higher now than it has ever been in recorded human history. Within the next few decades, one million species face extinction .
• Threats from climate change include invasive pests and illnesses, forest fires, and harsh weather.

Food Scarcity

• Global hunger and poor nutrition are on the rise for a variety of reasons, including climate change and an increase in extreme weather occurrences. Crops, animals, and fisheries might all be lost or become less effective.
• Marine resources that provide food for billions of people are in danger as a result of the ocean’s increasing acidity.
• Food sources from herding, hunting, and fishing have been hampered in several Arctic regions due to changes in the snow and ice cover.
• Heat stress can reduce available water and grazing areas, which can lower crop output and have an impact on cattle.

Health Hazards

• The single greatest hazard to human health is climate change. Air pollution, sickness, harsh weather, forced relocation, stress on mental health, increasing hunger and inadequate nutrition in areas where people cannot grow or get enough food are only a few of the health effects of climate change.
• 13 million individuals every year are killed by environmental conditions. Extreme weather events increase fatalities and make it challenging for healthcare systems to keep up with the growing number of diseases caused by changing weather patterns.

Read:  Climate Resilient Health Systems;   Climate Change and Health

Deepen Poverty and Displacement

• Climate change makes it easier for people to fall into and stay in poverty.
• Floods have the potential to devastate homes and livelihoods in urban slums. Outdoor jobs may be challenging to perform in the heat. Crops may be impacted by water scarcity.
• Weather-related disasters have uprooted an estimated 23.1 million people annually on average over the previous ten years (2010-2019), leaving millions more at risk of poverty.
• The majority of refugees are from countries that are least able and prepared to adjust to the effects of climate change.

Read:  Impact of climate change on Indian monsoon

Every increase in global warming matters

Numerous UN assessments were endorsed by hundreds of experts and government reviewers who concluded that keeping the increase in global temperature to 1.5°C will help us escape the worst climatic effects and maintain a habitable climate.

However, according to current national climate plans, the average global warming by the end of the century will reach about 3.2°C.

Across the world, emissions that contribute to climate change are produced, yet some countries produce significantly more than others. 3 per cent of global emissions are produced by the 100 countries with the lowest emissions.

68% of the contribution comes from the ten countries with the highest emissions. Everyone must act to combat climate change, but those who contribute most to the issue must be the countries with a larger obligation to do so first.

Read:  Black carbon emissions

Article Written By: Priti Raj

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• 29 May 2024

Chance of heatwaves in India rising with climate change

• Jude Coleman

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Two nurses care for a patient suffering from heat stroke in a hospital ward in Chennai. Credit: R. Satish Babu/AFP via Getty

India is sweating through a heatwave, with thermometers in some parts of the capital recording more than 52 °C. This is the third year in a row of lethally high temperatures in April and May for the country, and climate change is increasing the likelihood of such weather extremes.

Although heat in spring is normal in India, says Krishna AchutaRao, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, the duration and expanse of the heatwaves in 2022 , 2023 and 2024 are uncommon. "Three years in a row is unusual but consistent with what we expect from climate change," he says. The heatwaves have started earlier and are affecting a larger part of the country than in previous years. The past three years' temperatures are also hotter than in the historical trends.

Human-caused climate change underlies that variation. “Every heatwave in the world is now made hotter and more likely due to climate change,” says Mariam Zachariah, a climatologist at Imperial College London. An analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative published this month found that climate change made the current extreme temperatures in India 45 times more likely than without climate change. In any given year, India now has a 10% chance of being hit by an extreme heatwave in late spring. Intense heatwaves will probably be more frequent than in the past, although expecting them every year might be a stretch, says Zachariah, who worked on the WWA’s analysis. However, she adds that the odds of extreme heatwaves occurring in a given year could reach around 50% if current warming trends continue.

Turning up the heat

In addition to heatwaves being hotter and more frequent, they are also projected to last longer. “There is strong evidence from our research that the heatwaves are going to start earlier in the year and extend later into the season,” says AchutaRao. The 2022 heatwave, for example, began in March, which was unusually early. Heatwaves running longer is also worrisome, as they run the risk of overlapping with the monsoon season . The rains usually offer a reprieve from the heat but if heatwaves persist and overlap with rain, the combination of heat and humidity can be particularly deadly . People who work outside are especially vulnerable in these conditions.

According to the India Meteorological Department unusually high temperatures are forecast to continue into June. Many of the country’s local governments have heat action plans in place, but these focus mainly on human health, AchutaRao says. If global temperatures continue to increase, so will the range and length of heatwaves. That means other affected sectors, such as agriculture, will need to have adaptation plans, too.

The trend is another reason to continue to fight global warming. “We cannot keep postponing our efforts to mitigate climate change,” Zachariah says.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01577-5

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Images of Climate Change That Cannot Be Missed

By Bill McKibben

I can remember, a quarter century ago, when photographers would call me fairly regularly to ask where they should go to take pictures of global warming. (I’d written an early book on what was still often called the greenhouse effect.) In those days, it was hard to say: the danger of climate change remained mostly prospective, something that scientists assured us was coming but which had not, in its most obvious forms, really appeared. I’d suggest an Alaskan village, where the loss of sea ice had led to ruinous erosion, or one of the South Pacific islands, where “king tides” were beginning to cause problems, but in those days it was hard to actually see global warming. The creative photographers at the time who figured out strategies to document the change deserve great respect: James Balog, for instance, whose pictures ended up in the Library of Congress this spring, and who is most noted for his time-lapse images of collapsing glaciers, which required herculean technological perseverance to obtain.

Now, with rapid increases in temperature powering a never-ending stream of fires, floods, droughts, and storms, it’s easy to capture images—perhaps too easy, in that we’re so inundated with inundation and conflagration that, at some point, we seem to shut down. Last year’s record chaos , featuring the hottest temperatures in a hundred millennia, feels barely remembered; the news this spring that carbon dioxide has taken a record leap didn’t make the front pages. Those of us in the eastern U.S. clearly saw and smelled the orange skies from the Canadian wildfire smoke last summer, but the effect didn’t linger; it’s not hanging over this year’s elections (though the Canadian West is on fire again, and the smoke is once more making its way south). So I’m forever on the lookout for ways to help people remember the dimensions of this crisis, which moves at lightning speed in geological terms but just a twitch too slow for the 24/7 news cycle.

I think the single best collection of images of the climate crisis I’ve ever seen is the exhibit that will be up through early August at the Asia Society, on Park Avenue. (If that seems a parochial spot for a global exhibit, it is worth remembering that sixty per cent of the world’s population lives in Asia.) Co-curated by the celebrated photographer Susan Meiselas and the exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries, and led by the Asia Society’s Orville Schell , the longtime China watcher and correspondent for The New Yorker (whose late brother Jonathan wrote “ The Fate of the Earth ,” which first appeared in the magazine), “Coal + Ice” is an evolving project. The first version of it that I saw, several years ago, centered on some remarkable images from the mountain climber and cinematographer David Breashears, who died in March, at the age of sixty-eight. Beginning in 2007, he’d retraced the 1921 Mallory expedition to Everest, climbing to the same crags to photograph the same Rongbuk valley, to show the massive ice loss that had occurred in the intervening decades. Now those images, in this updated version of the exhibit, fill an entire wall: first you see historical photographs, some by George Mallory and others by the Italian photographer Vittorio Sella, and then the screen wipes right to left to bring up the modern image of the much diminished glacier. It’s mesmerizing, as are the video images on the opposite side of the room, of a titanic coal-mining machine scraping the side of a Chinese cliff.

But perhaps the single most powerful rendering of the climate crisis I’ve ever seen is in a smallish square room on the second floor. Each of the four walls has been turned into a video screen, and they simultaneously play images collected over the past decade or so by the South African photographer Gideon Mendel. The films show people in places around the world returning to their flooded homes: there are Bengalis and Nigerians and Texans and Germans and many more, but the sequences are remarkably similar—people wading through chest-deep, stagnant floodwater, opening the front door of their houses, and then wandering into the waters inside. There’s no dialogue, just the overwhelming sense that something very wrong has happened. If the power of Breashears’s images involve change over time—how three hundred feet of vertical ice has simply disappeared in the Himalayas—then Mendel’s videos invoke change over physical space: the same foreign and scary thing is happening around the globe, simultaneously. The only way to make it more powerful would be to flood the room as you were watching, so that you, too, were standing up to your chest in oily water.

Mendel has a history with trauma. His family are German Jews; his father’s father died in the First Word War, and his mother in the Holocaust. The family relocated to Johannesburg, which meant he grew up in the midst of the apartheid regime, and his first big photographic projects were about its effects. He then spent two decades chronicling the AIDS crisis, turning to climate change after moving to London. When I reached him last week, he was in deep floodwater in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in the state Rio Grande do Sul, where more than half a million people have been forced from their homes by swollen rivers. We arranged to speak the next day; he began by describing the scene in which I’d found him. “We finally got a boat about sunset,” he said, and so he was able to get to the center of Porto Alegre. “I’ve seen many floods, but this is a beautiful, lovely modern—and historic—city, and it’s completely underwater. A huge, beautiful museum, a market, all underwater. It feels like it’s a new chapter in climate-change impacts, like it’s ramping up.”

Mendel first became interested in climate change around 2007, when he started wondering about the world that his children would inhabit by mid-century. “As a photographer, I began to research some of the images people were making. This was before Instagram, so I was looking at Flickr and such, and the images were mostly polar bears and glaciers. What I felt was lacking was a visceral sense of how people were affected by climate change.” That year, floods inundated Yorkshire, England, and Mendel, working with an old Rolleiflex medium-format camera, made portraits of people in their drowned homes, some of which ran in the Guardian . A few weeks later, Mendel was on assignment in India, where large portions of Bihar State were submerged; he took some pictures and then looked at them side by side with his English portraits, noting the uncanny similarities. That observation set him off “on a mission of trying to get to flooding.” Since then, his years have been demarked by the great deluges that have become ever more frequent on an overheating earth: Haiti in 2008, Australia and Pakistan in 2010, Thailand in 2011. Plenty of photographers were documenting Sandy in New York, in 2012, so he went to Nigeria, instead; 2013 was Germany, as the Rhine overflowed; 2014 was Somerset, in England, and Srinagar, in Kashmir; 2015, “the year of the Paris summit,” found him in Brazil, Bangladesh, and the Carolinas. France flooded in 2016, and 2017 saw Hurricane Harvey, in Houston, still the American record-holder for the greatest total rainfall from a single weather event. He was beginning to work digitally and adding video to his still images; he also began branching out to document the aftermath of the enormous forest fires that had begun to rage from California and Canada to Greece. In 2022, he was back in Pakistan, for what may be the most extensive flooding recorded since Noah.

“I don’t think I operate like a conventional photographer or a TV crew,” he told me. “The emotional connection, the relationship with people, is very important. I think what I offer them is a deep witnessing. A terrible thing has happened to them, and I offer them a chance to show the world what’s happened to them. It’s not the moment when people are fleeing—I’m not the photographer from the newspaper. The water can linger for days, for months, and so I’m there when people are coming back.”

Shock and horror are the first emotions when people are evacuating, he says. “Returning is a kind of different moment. I think there’s something dreamlike and strange about going into your own, or any, flooded home. A kind of inversion of reality. Reflections where there shouldn’t be reflections—the light is very dreamlike.” The dream turns to nightmare, he said, when the water finally recedes, leaving the sodden mess behind. “The wealthier you are, the larger your house, the harder to deal with the aftermath. If you have a tin shack in Bangladesh, you clean the walls and get back to life. But a multimillion-dollar house in Texas, it’s days making inventories of what you’ve lost for insurance. You have to rip out the walls. It takes years and years to recover.”

Our economic system is having an increasingly tough time dealing with this new reality: the Times reported earlier this month on “the possible collapse of the U.S. home insurance industry” amid climate-caused turmoil, “a flashing red light for an American economy that is built on real property. Without insurance, banks won’t issue a mortgage; without a mortgage, most people can’t buy a home. With fewer buyers, real estate values are likely to decline, along with property tax revenues, leaving communities with less money for schools, police and other basic services.” Separately, a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “global temperature shocks” are already undercutting economic progress, and expected rises in the temperature should reduce the global G.D.P. by half by century’s end. Here’s how the authors explained the situation: “These magnitudes are comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently.”

Mendel is a Robert Capa, a Margaret Bourke-White, a Mathew Brady of this new war. At the Asia Society, turning to try to catch the repeating scenes from five continents as they’re projected around you is to feel in your gut what we’re doing to ourselves on this planet. That this war is still under way—getting daily worse—makes these images especially valuable. We’re still early enough in this battle that, if we act decisively, we can limit the number of people who will have to bear this kind of trauma. Meanwhile, we have majestic documentation of our folly. ♦

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Delhi temperature may break record for highest ever in India: 126.1 degrees

By Emily Mae Czachor

May 29, 2024 / 2:59 PM EDT / CBS News

A temperature reading collected in Delhi, India's capital territory, may have broken national records as the country grapples with a blistering heat wave. The reading — 52.9 degrees Celsius or 126.1 degrees Fahrenheit — was preliminary and technically an outlier compared with others taken in Delhi on the same day, officials said . But, if confirmed, it would be the highest temperature ever registered anywhere in India.

The temperature reading came from a substation in Mungeshpur, a neighborhood in Delhi. Located in the northwest, India's capital territory — which includes its capital city, New Delhi — is home to almost 30 million people and covers about 600 square miles of land. The Indian Meteorological Department said in a news release that the reading out of Mungeshpur could be due to a sensor issue or some other error, and that it would examine the data and the sensor. In Delhi, substations in various locations generally registered temperatures between 45.2 degrees and 49.1 degrees Celsius, which corresponds roughly to 113 degrees and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.   

Amid the heat wave, people in Delhi as well as the northern states Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were advised to avoid heat exposure under a "red" weather alert issued on Tuesday and Wednesday by the Indian Meteorological Department. The red alert , designating "heat wave to severe heat wave" conditions, urged people to keep cool if possible and stay hydrated, as at least three deaths have been reported so far in connection with the weather, according to  the BBC , a CBS News partner. 

The Indian Meteorological Department issues red alerts for "extreme heat" when a severe heat wave persists for more than two days. The alerts advise people to "take action" and warn of a "very high likelihood of developing heat illness and heat stroke" for people of all ages while also calling for "extreme care" for vulnerable populations. A spokesperson for the department said in the latest daily weather bulletin  on Wednesday that excessive heat continued to persist across the north but was expected to abate starting Thursday.

Temperatures soared outside of Delhi, too. On Tuesday it was 50.5 degrees Celsius , or nearly 123 degrees Fahrenheit, in the area around one substation in Rajasthan, a desert state that in the past has recorded some of India's highest-ever temperature readings, according to the Indian Meteorological Department. Another substation in the city of Sirsa, which is farther north, came up with a similar reading Tuesday, at 50.3 degrees Celsius or roughly 122.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Heat waves are most common in India during this time of year, according to the meteorological service, which says they tend to happen between March and June, with peak heat in May. But heat waves in the region have been especially treacherous recently. In April, hundreds of people across Asia died as a result of extremely high temperatures, in India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Gaza, as well as other places. In India, that heat wave drove triple-digit temperatures in a number of areas, including in the eastern city of Bhagora where the temperature approached 115 degrees Fahrenheit . The weather damaged crops and forced school closures that came prematurely, weeks ahead of the planned summer break.

A study on the extreme weather released earlier this month by the organization World Weather Attribution said climate change amplified what may have already been a strong heat wave to make it especially severe. Around that time, Raghu Murtugudde, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai, told CBS News that El Niño may have played a role as well.

"I think it's a mix of El Niño, global warming and the seasonality," Murtugudde said. " El Niño is transitioning to La Niña . This is the time when the maximum warming happens towards the Indian Ocean. So, all these things are basically adding steroids to the weather."

Arshad R. Zargar and Li Cohen contributed reporting.

• Climate Change

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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Climate change impacts millions in India. But as the country votes, some politicians skirt the issue

Vaibhav Maske, a farmer, carries water in a vessel at his farm outside Beed, India, Friday, May 3, 2024. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. Maske said local and federal governments need to prioritize providing a water source for farming. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

A farmer walks on a lake that has dried up due to drought outside Beed, India, Saturday, May 4, 2024. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Vaibhav Maske, a farmer, inspects his dry water tank next to a borewell on his farm outside Beed, India, Friday, May 3, 2024. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. Maske said local and federal governments need to prioritize providing a water source for farming. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

A farmer fills water, supplied by a government tanker, into barrels outside Beed, India, Saturday, May 4, 2024. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. But experts and voters say there has been little talk about climate change on the campaign trail. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

A farmer looks down into a dry well due to drought outside Beed, India, Friday, May 3, 2024. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. But experts and voters say there has been little talk about climate change on the campaign trail. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

FILE - People wade through a flooded street in Chennai, India, Nov. 25, 2020. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. (AP Photo/R. Parthibhan, File)

Indian voters Monuwara Begum and her husband Yaad Ali disembark from a boat and walk to a polling station after crossing the Brahmaputra River during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. “All the politicians promise to solve problems related to flooding but after elections are over, no one cares about it,” Ali said. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Indian voters Yaad Ali, left, and his wife Monuwara Begum, right, and his son Musikur Alam stand outside their house in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River on the eve of the second phase of the national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Thursday, April 25, 2024. “All the politicians promise to solve problems related to flooding but after elections are over, no one cares about it,” Ali said. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Indian voter Yaad Ali fishes in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River on the eve of the second phase of the national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Thursday, April 25, 2024. Thousands in Assam state are dependent on fishing and selling produce like rice, jute and vegetables from their small farms on floating river islands, known locally as Chars. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Indian voter Monuwara Begum picks chili from a garden in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River on the eve of the second phase of the national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Thursday, April 25, 2024. Thousands in Assam state are dependent on fishing and selling produce like rice, jute and vegetables from their small farms on floating river islands, known locally as Chars. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Indian voter Yaad Ali collects milk from his cow in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River on the eve of the second phase of the national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Thursday, April 25, 2024. Thousands in Assam state are dependent on fishing and selling produce like rice, jute and vegetables from their small farms on floating river islands, known locally as Chars. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

People travel on a boat to a polling station across the Brahmaputra river on the eve of the second phase of the national election in Morigaon district, near Guwahati, India, Thursday, April 25, 2024. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. But experts and voters say there has been little talk about climate change on the campaign trail. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

FILE - Rescuers remove mud and debris as they search for people feared trapped after a landslide near a temple on the outskirts of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh state, Aug.14, 2023. Voters in India, from the rain-drenched Himalayas in the north to the sweltering, dry south, are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. (AP Photo/ Pradeep Kumar, File)

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BEED, India (AP) — Almost 970 million Indians are voting in general elections amid sweltering heat and unpredictable weather extremes exacerbated by human-caused climate change, leading to loss of livelihood, forced migration and increasingly difficult living conditions for millions across the country.

Voters are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. In their election manifestos, India’s top political parties, including the governing Bharatiya Janata Party and the main opposition, the Congress party, have made multiple promises to act on climate damage and reduce emissions of planet-heating gases.

A farmer walks on a lake that has dried up due to drought outside Beed, India, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

But there has been little talk about climate change on the campaign trail.

“Climate change is still not among the headlines during these elections despite its obvious impact on millions of Indian lives,” said Anjal Prakash, author of multiple United Nations climate reports.

The Indian subcontinent — surrounded by ocean on three sides and the Himalayan ranges to its north — is vulnerable to sea level rise, severe storms, heavy floods and melting glaciers. It’s also experienced extreme heat spells and severe drought as global average temperatures climb. A report by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment said India experienced extreme weather on nearly 90% of the days last year.

Here’s a look at how the effects of climate change are influencing voters.

A farmer fills water, supplied by a government tanker, into barrels outside Beed, India, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

EXTREME HEAT AND LONGER DROUGHTS IN WESTERN AND CENTRAL INDIA

Vaibhav Maske’s millet farm was dry to the bone in early May, even though he dug three borewells 600 feet deep looking for water.

The 25-year-old lives in Marathwada, one of the most acutely affected heat and drought-prone regions in western Maharashtra state, and farmers there say the current summer is the worst major drought in almost a decade. But politicians haven’t been paying attention.

“Politicians are only talking about religion and caste. No one is talking about the environment or farmers issues,” said Maske. “They are saying Prime Minister Modi is giving money to farmers, that’s good. But at the same time, the taxes are so high on everything including our farm equipment, so how can we make ends meet this way?”

Vaibhav Maske, a farmer, inspects his dry water tank next to a borewell on his farm outside Beed, India, Friday, May 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Since February 2019, a federal government scheme transfers $70 to around 100 million farmers a year to supplement their income. But Maske said it’s of little use as farm expenses like water, fertilizers and farm gear now cost him up to $180 a month.

Instead, Maske said local and federal governments need to prioritize providing a water source for farming. “They need to dig canals or divert some water from rivers in nearby areas, so we have some steady supply of water. No one has done anything about this,” he said.

A farmer looks down into a dry well due to drought outside Beed, India, Friday, May 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

STRONGER AND MORE FREQUENT CYCLONES FOR COASTAL REGIONS

India’s eastern coasts have long been prone to cyclones, but the number of intense storms is increasing along the country’s coast. Last year was India’s deadliest cyclone season in recent times, killing 523 people and costing an estimated $2.5 billion in damage.

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said their studies found that “floods have increased threefold since the 1950s and cyclones have increased by 50% since the 1980s.”

It’s making disasters a political focal point for the regions worst affected by them.

People wade through a flooded street in Chennai, India, Nov. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/R. Parthibhan)

Around 25,000 people in the Ennore neighborhood in Chennai planned to boycott the Indian general elections in part due to lack of government support post Cyclone Michaung , which devastated the eastern coasts of southern India in December 2023.

“Politicians just come asking for votes making promises,” said Subhashini Ravi, a 37-year-old resident of Ennore. “Once elections are over, they just disappear.”

Still, the boycott was called off at the last minute after the regional government said it would address the issues post-election.

Issues related to religion, caste and employment still determine most Indians’ political preferences, but Koll said that at local levels, climate is playing a role when “the entire community is affected.”

Local and federal authorities have managed to adapt partially to increasingly frequent cyclones by evacuating coastal residents in time and drastically reducing loss of life. But as cyclones get more intense, many residents like Ravi are still worried for the future.

Indian voters Monuwara Begum and her husband Yaad Ali disembark from a boat and walk to a polling station after crossing the Brahmaputra River during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

UNPREDICTABLE AND INCREASED FLOODING IN ASSAM

Thousands in Assam state are dependent on fishing and selling produce like rice, jute and vegetables from their small farms on floating river islands in the Brahmaputra River, known locally as Chars.

When it floods, residents of Char islands often row in makeshift rafts to dry land, and return once it subsides. But floods are now more devastating and unpredictable because of climate change, locals say, making it harder to stay on the islands.

Indian voter Yaad Ali fishes in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River on the eve of the second phase of the national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Residents are wary nothing will change no matter who they vote for.

“All the politicians promise to solve problems related to flooding but after elections are over, no one cares about it,” said Yaad Ali, a 55-year-old farmer in Sandahkhaiti, a village located on a small river island in north eastern India’s Assam state.

Badruddin Ajmal, the leader of the All India United Democratic Front, a regional party in Assam and the main opposition in the state, has repeatedly talked about providing for long term relief from flooding during his campaigns this election.

Leaders of national parties such as the BJP — also in power in Assam state — and the Congress Party have largely ignored the issue during their election campaigning in Assam this year.

Considered one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change according to a 2021 report, Ali said the lack of political will is only making life harder.

People travel on a boat to a polling station across the Brahmaputra river on the eve of the second phase of the national election in Morigaon district, near Guwahati, India, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

MELTING GLACIERS AND INTENSE RAIN IN THE HIMALAYAS

In Shimla city in India’s mountainous Himachal Pradesh state, apple farmer Sanjay Chauhan recalls the deadly rainfall in the region last year that killed 428 people and broke local rainfall records.

“I had not seen anything like this,” Chauhan said. He incurred $5,000 worth of damage to his orchards in the heavy rain, and property damage across the state was estimated at $1.42 billion. “Many issues were raised after the devastation last year but the government and political leaders are only providing temporary relief,” he said.

Rescuers remove mud and debris as they search for people feared trapped after a landslide near a temple on the outskirts of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh state, Aug.14, 2023. (AP Photo/ Pradeep Kumar, File)

Rising global temperatures means more water evaporates in the heat which is then dumped as heavy rain. Fast melting glaciers in the region that scientists say could lose 80% of their volume by the end of the century means the Himalayan region and its people are at further risk .

But climate-related concerns like heavy flooding and melting glaciers have not featured in the election campaigns in the state. Most political speeches in Himachal Pradesh have focused on issues related to corruption, price rise and unemployment, regardless of party allegiance.

Meanwhile, Chauhan said, locals are “worried about what the monsoons will bring this year.”

Other regions also suffered heavy losses in terms of lives, property and farmland due to heavy rain — including the neighboring state of Uttarakhand, Delhi and most northern and western Indian states.

“What we need are long term strategies” to combat extreme weather events, Chauhan said.

Associated Press journalist Anupam Nath in Gauhati, India, contributed to this report.

Sibi Arasu on X at @sibi123 ___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

In Pictures

New Delhi records highest-ever temperature of 52.3C as north India swelters

Brutal weather forces schools to close in several cities and raises the risk of heatstroke for people working outdoors..

People in northern India are struggling with an unrelenting, weeks-long heatwave, with temperature in India’s capital soaring to a national record-high of 52.3 degrees Celsius (126.1 Fahrenheit), the government’s weather bureau said.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD), which reported “severe heatwave conditions”, recorded the temperature in the New Delhi suburb of Mungeshpur on Wednesday afternoon, smashing the previous national record in the desert of Rajasthan by more than one degree Celsius.

Rajasthan’s Phalodi town previously held the all-time heat record, hitting 51C (124F) in 2016. India declares a heatwave whenever temperatures are above 45C (113 F).

The brutal weather has forced schools to close in several cities and raised the risk of heatstrokes for people working outdoors. The extreme heat also coincides with a six-week general election, increasing health risks as people wait in long lines to cast their vote. The voting ends on Saturday.

The sizzling temperatures are also taking a toll on animals, putting them at risk of dehydration and heatstroke. Sitaram, an animal conservationist in the city of Bikaner in Rajasthan who goes by one name, said endangered chinkaras — also known as Indian gazelle — are facing a water shortage.

April, May and June are hot in most parts of India before monsoon rains bring cooler temperatures. But extreme heat is fast becoming a public health crisis in India, with the warm weather getting more intense in the past decade and typically accompanied by severe water shortages.

Tens of millions of India’s 1.4 billion people lack running water. New Delhi authorities have also warned of the risk of water shortages as the capital swelters in headache-inducing heat – cutting supplies to some areas.

‘Unbearable’ heat in Delhi is testing limits of human survival

Delhi experienced record highs near 122 degrees (50 Celsius) Tuesday and Wednesday.

DELHI — India’s capital territory of Delhi experienced some of its hottest weather on record Tuesday and Wednesday, with highs in some neighborhoods near the landmark threshold of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). The exceptional heat has closed schools, endangered outdoor workers, stressed water supplies and infrastructure, and reached levels that would test the limits of human survival if sustained.

The searing temperatures in northern India are part of a broader heat wave across much of Southeast Asia, which is one of multiple heat waves occurring around the world because of a combination of short-term weather patterns and long-term warming trends fueled by human-caused climate change.

The heat wave, which began building more than a week ago, has at times surpassed a dangerous threshold.

A Washington Post analysis found that the wet-bulb globe temperature, which measures the amount of heat stress on the human body, reached 97 degrees to 100 degrees (36 to 38 Celsius) in Delhi on Tuesday. That is higher than the 89.6 Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) threshold that researchers have identified as posing a risk to human survival if such heat is prolonged. The wet-bulb globe temperature is based on a combination of factors including temperature, humidity, wind and clouds, and was calculated by The Post using data from a nearby weather station.

The extreme heat has had wide-ranging impacts.

Amit Sah, a labor contractor, had hired seven workers to install tiles on a roof in east Delhi from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. But, with the heat, he stops work from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and resumes in the evening. “It creates a massive loss for me. But the past three days have been unbearable. It feels like we are on fire outside. Our mouths run dry for water. We are sweating nonstop.”

Last week, a local consumer court that had no air conditioner or coolers in the national capital adjourned as the judge stated in an order that “there is too much heat in the courtroom, which led to sweating to such an extent that it is difficult to hear arguments” and no water supply in the washroom, according to local reports.

The conditions spread across swaths of India, as all schools shut for the next week in the eastern state of Bihar after several students fainted from heatstroke. The north and western regions also had similar alerts.

One of Sah’s workers, Ramnath Paswan, for the first time in his life took the day off because of the heat, but said he has to work Thursday even if the heat continues to break records because he works for a daily wage. “I have never seen this type of heat in Delhi. But we will have to work. Our stomachs won’t listen to us, if it’s hot or not.”

Several cities in India recorded their all-time highest temperatures on Wednesday, according to climate historian Maximiliano Herrera , including 120 degrees (48.8 Celsius) at Rohtak and 117 degrees (47.2 Celsius) at Fursatganj. That followed a high temperature of 121 degrees (49.5 Celsius) on Tuesday at Sirsa, the highest ever in the state of Haryana .

Around Delhi, the highest reading recorded by a manually operated station Tuesday or Wednesday was 117.7 degrees (47.6 Celsius) on Tuesday in Aya Nagar, southwest of the city. Automated weather stations posted temperatures as high as 121.8 degrees (49.9 Celsius) in the region.

News reports on Wednesday morning that Delhi exceeded 50 degrees Celsius for the first time ever appear to have been premature. Several news organizations reported a temperature as high as 126 degrees ( 52.9 Celsius ) in the Mungeshpur area of Delhi. That would have been an all-time high for anywhere in the country.

However, a news release from the India Meteorological Department said that measurement came from an automated weather station that is considered less reliable than its manually operated stations. Mungeshpur’s temperature of 52.9 degrees Celsius is “an outlier compared to other stations. It could be due to error in the sensor or the local factor. IMD is examining the data and sensors,” the Meteorological Department said.

Thunderstorms and dust storms riled parts of Delhi on Wednesday afternoon, but provided only temporary relief. After some minutes, the ground dried up again and the sky cleared quickly.

The Meteorological Department said that “heat wave conditions will reduce during next 2-3 days due to gradual fall in temperature in association with approaching western disturbance, rainfall/thunderstorm and southwesterly wind blowing from Arabian Sea to northwest India.”

Record heat has scorched not just India, but much of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Mexico and Florida this month. The exceptional May heat follows an April that marked the 11th straight month of record global heat . That month began with a heat wave across West Africa that would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of human-caused climate change, an analysis by World Weather Attribution showed.

Other factors contributing to the heat waves include stagnant areas of high pressure known as heat domes, El Niño and record-warm ocean temperatures worldwide. Forecasters predict El Niño to wane in the next several months, which could moderate global temperatures.

Stillman reported from Washington. Ian Livingston, Scott Dance and Jason Samenow contributed to this report.