If you think summer has never been this hot, you’re quite right. What you’re experiencing could well be the hottest summer in 100 years. The first four months of 2010 have been the hottest on record. Chetan Chauhan reports. In pics: Delhi sizzles
If you think summer has never been this hot, you’re quite right. What you’re experiencing could well be the hottest summer in 100 years.
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The first four months of 2010 have been the hottest on record and north India hasn’t been this warm in 100 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — America’s climate agency, which monitor global weather using satellites — said on Tuesday. If this trend continues, 2010 could be the warmest in history.
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“March has been recorded as the warmest month in the last 60 years in north India,” said the NOAA report. Average global temperature in January-April was 13.3 degree Celsius, 0.69 degrees above the average recorded since 1880.
Three regions in the world — Canada, North Africa and South Asia — recorded average temperatures higher than the rest of the world.
The Indian Meteorological Department reported the maximum on Sunday touched 47 degrees in some places in Haryana — several degrees above normal for this time of the year.
The NOAA said the heat wave was a visible indication of climate change. Indian weather experts blamed it on EL Nino — the warming of ocean temperatures in the Pacific that disrupts weather around the world — but said climate change had caused a swifter increase in night temperatures.
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“Records show that on average, night temperatures in north India have been 1-1.5 degree Celsius higher than previous years,” said Dr Krishna Kumar of the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
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“Records show that on average, night temperatures in north India have been 1-1.5 degree Celsius higher than previous years,” said Dr Krishna Kumar of the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
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A hotter earth’s surface also meant Arctic sea ice — the global cooling agent — was melting faster. Satellite data showed snow cover was the fourth lowest on record since 1967, the NOAA said.
“January-April 2010 was the 34th consecutive year with above average temperatures,” the report said. The only exception was China, which recorded its wettest and coldest April since 1974.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
