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Delhi, Shimla and Hyderabad register record-breaking warmth

P. Sunderarajan

On January 27, 12 stations broke their earlier records

Shimla had a departure of 11 degrees Celsius from normal
Delhi could also not escape the grip of ‘warmth wave’

NEW DELHI: Even as the winter season is on its way out, the India Meteorological Department on Wednesday came out with a report that for several parts of the country, including the two popular hill stations of Shimla and Mukteswar in north India, January was a month of record-breaking warmth.

Shimla took the cake, with a whopping departure of 11 degrees Celsius from the normal maximum temperature on January 21 and of 12 degrees Celsius on the 27th, which took the temperatures to 20.7 degrees Celsius and 20.9 degrees Celsius respectively.

The previous record for the hill station was 19.5 degrees Celsius. It was registered two years ago, on January 27, 2007.

Mukteswar, near Nainital, recorded a maximum departure of 13 degrees from normal on 23rd.

But, the “feat” could not make it to the record as the temperatures still fell short of its previous record, albeit by a slight margin of 0.2 degrees Celsius.

Warmth wave

Delhi could also not escape the grip of ‘warmth wave,’ as it recorded an average temperature of 15.3 degrees Celsius and a mean minimum temperature of 8.9 degrees Celsius for the month. It was the highest since 1990 for both the categories. The mean monthly maximum temperature for the capital was, however, a tad better at 21.7 degrees Celsius. It was the second highest in the past 19 years.

In all, 31 meteorological stations registered record-breaking warmth last month. The list includes Dehra Dun, Hyderabad, Pune, Visakhapatnam, Nizamabad, Allahabad, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Bhopal, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Raipur, Mahabaleshwar, Yeotmal, Sagar, Akola, Guna, Jagdalpur and Daltonganj.

According to the IMD report, mean maximum temperatures of the month were above normal by two degrees or more over Himachal Pradesh, north Andhra Pradesh, Konkan and Goa, Orissa, south Madhya Pradesh and parts of Kashmir, apart from Chhattisgarh, Vidarbha, Marathwada and Manipur and Nagaland.

Red letter day

The mean minimum temperatures of the month, in turn, were above normal by two degrees or more over many parts of Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and some parts of Chattisgarh, Orissa, Gangetic West Bengal, Madhya Maharahstra, Vidarbha, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

January 27 may well go down as a red letter day in the annals of the IMD as on that day alone, 12 stations such as Raipur broke their earlier records, with a maximum of 35 degree Celsius, which was about 2.8 degrees Celsius above the earlier record of 33.2 degrees Celsius registered on January 29, 2003. On 25th and 26th, 11 stations surpassed their records and on 29th eight stations.

One-year event?

Is it all because of global climate change? Are the effects of global warming already in?

A senior meteorologist at the IMD refuted such a link. “What has happened is only a freak one-year event. For global climate change, there has to be a long-term trend. It is, however, a significant event worth noting since as many as 31 stations, out of the 200 plus meteorological stations of IMD, have broken their records.”

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