India could witness an additional 15 to 40 unusually hot days every year over the next two decades because of accelerating climate change, compared with the 1981–2010 baseline, according to projections by CRAVIS, a new AI-powered climate intelligence platform launched on Wednesday.
The platform also projects that unusually warm nights could rise by 20 to 40 days annually across several regions during the same period, signalling mounting heat stress and growing pressure on energy systems, health infrastructure and the economy.
“Unusually hot days” refer to days when daily mean temperatures exceed the district-specific 90th percentile threshold, based on the 1981–2010 climatic baseline.
CRAVIS has been developed by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and uses more than 40 years of public datasets from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, and other institutions, with projections extending to 2070.
The platform enables district-level analysis across 279 indicators under multiple emission and global warming scenarios. It also allows users to overlay climate data with sectoral datasets such as India’s power infrastructure, agriculture, land use and public health information for integrated risk analysis.
CRAVIS has been designed as a collaborative data commons, inviting organisations and partners to contribute datasets and analysis to continuously expand and strengthen its intelligence base.
{{/usCountry}}CRAVIS has been designed as a collaborative data commons, inviting organisations and partners to contribute datasets and analysis to continuously expand and strengthen its intelligence base.
{{/usCountry}}The platform further projects that more than half of India’s 281 data centres are already exposed to temperatures above 35°C for more than 90 days annually. By 2040, nearly 90% could face similar heat exposure, significantly increasing cooling requirements and operating costs.
In Delhi, warmer nights — defined as minimum temperatures above 20°C — are projected to rise from around 180 days a year at present to over 210 days in the next 25 years, equivalent to an additional month of cooling demand, with implications for both peak electricity load and annual consumption.
Alongside rising temperatures, heavy rainfall events are also expected to increase steadily over the next two decades. According to CRAVIS, many districts could see 10 to 30 additional heavy rainfall days annually.
Central and southern states such as Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are expected to witness sharper increases in both rainfall intensity and hot days.
“Last night felt like one of the hottest nights we have experienced in April. Rising temperatures, increasing hot days, and more frequent heavy rainfall events are clear signals that climate change is a present reality for India, shaping our economy and daily lives. Over the last decade, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, India has worked to make climate action an economically viable proposition, not just an obligation,” Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said during the launch of CRAVIS.
“Going forward, corporate boardrooms will have to factor climate risks into their core decision-making,” he said.
Goyal recalled that at COP21 in Paris, India and PM Modi played a leadership role in bringing the Global South together to recognise that climate change required urgent action.
“I dare say no other country in the world has made such efforts. A country with a relatively lower per capita income, with a large population to support, with many competing demands on scarce resources or budgets, has ventured to take such ambitious targets and achieve them (nationally determined contributions),” he said.
The CEEW findings come at a time when India is expecting a below-normal monsoon due to the impact of the impending El Niño.
India is already witnessing rising exposure to heat, with more than 57% of districts and nearly 75% of the population facing high to very high heat risk, CEEW said.