MET WARNS THIS SUMMER WILL BE BLISTERING HOT

NEW DELHI: This year’s summer will be harsher than usual and the next couple of months will see temperatures above normal, the Indian Meteorological Department warmed on Wednesday, which also happened to be the hottest February day in a decade.

Northwest India will see average temperatures higher than a degree Celsius in March and May. Heatwave conditions are likely in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, parts of Maharashtra, and coastal Andhra Pradesh.

Last year, more than 1,600 people died due to extreme climate conditions. Of them, 700 died due to heatwave. A bulk of the deaths, over 400, were reported from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The weather department also reported that 2016 was the warmest year in India since 1901 when records began. Temperatures last year hovered almost 1° Celsius above the 1961-90 mean. The trend continued into the new with January 2017 being the hottest ever.

The trend keeps with a global pattern which has seen the planet record its hottest years in the last two years.

Starting this summer, IMD will be releasing extended forecasts and five-day averaged forecasts for the next 15 days of heat wave conditions. NEWDELHI: Belying grim forecasts inspired by the impact of demonetization, India’s economy grew at a healthy 7% in the fiscal third quarter.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a 6.4% growth rate in the quarter to December. The pace of growth did, however, slow from the 7.4% logged in the second quarter of the fiscal year.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) retained its projection that the economy will grow 7.1% in 2016-17, slowing from 7.6% in the previous financial year.

More importantly, the 7.1% GDP growth rate was retained over a higher base in 2015-16. On 1 February, CSO revised the 2015-16 GDP growth number to 7.9% from 7.6% estimated earlier.

The first advance estimate of GDP growth was released a month before it was due to help