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The latest advisory from the India Meteorological Department has warned of severe heat wave conditions affecting extensive areas of eastern India and the Gangetic plain for the upcoming days.
DS Pai of the IMD, while speaking with CNBC-TV18, suggested that this year might surpass the temperature records set in 2023, potentially becoming the warmest on record.
Eastern India is expected to experience intense heat, with a heat wave alert issued for the Gangetic region of West Bengal over the next five days, along with parts of North Odisha, the weather department informed.
Bihar and Jharkhand also face a high likelihood of heatwave conditions during this period. The weather department forecasts heatwave-like conditions across the country for the coming week.
The latest bulletin from the IMD indicates the prevalence of “heat wave to severe heat wave conditions” in many areas of Gangetic West Bengal and parts of Odisha. Isolated places in Bihar, Jharkhand, Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rayalaseema, interior Karnataka, and Eastern Uttar Pradesh are also expected to experience heat wave conditions in the next few days.
Meanwhile, Mumbai has received its second heat wave advisory in two weeks, with IMD projecting hot and humid conditions to persist in the city over the next few days.
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The month of May is anticipated to bring heat wave conditions to Central and North Western India, attributed in part to the ongoing El Nino phenomenon. El Nino, a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean, has the potential to influence global weather patterns by weakening trade winds and redistributing warm water towards the west coast of the Americas.
Earlier last week, the IMD had predicted an ‘above-normal’ monsoon in 2024, which quantitatively could be around 106 per cent of the long period average (LPA).
The forecast comes with a model error of plus/minus 5 per cent.
This is the first time since 2016 that IMD, in its first forecast, has predicted ‘above-normal’ rains.
An El Niño, expected to turn neutral by the time the monsoon season sets in June and then gradually move towards La Niña, a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, and below-normal snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere from January to March will all combine to give India a good monsoon, according to IMD.
In 2023, the southwest monsoon was ‘below normal’ due to the effect of El Niño, the first time in the preceding four years.
The Met department said that almost 75-80 per cent of the country’s landmass is expected to receive normal monsoon this year except for some areas in the extreme Northwest (hills of Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand), East, and Northeast India (such as some parts of Assam, Odisha, and Gangetic West Bengal) where monsoon rains might be below normal.
