Hottest cities

Machilipatnam, a port city in Andhra Pradesh, and the hill station of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, both experienced temperatures over 2.5 degrees Celsius above normal. Overall, 2017 was India’s 4th hottest year, according to a draft IMD report, making it the fourth consecutive recordbreaking year in terms of heat. The average national temperatures were 0.7 degrees Celsius above the 1971-2000 average.

However, average temperatures do not reflect regional and local variations. “The data is from 90 cities and from the IMD information that is available for the weather stations across the country,” Alan Reppart, senior meteorologist at Accuweather said of their compilation.

It showed that for 40% of the cities the average temperatures last year were at least 1 degrees Celsius above normal. Delhi was 1.6 degrees Celsius hotter that normal in 2017. Only five cities saw a decline in average temperatures: Solapur (- 0.2), Hisar (-0.4), Tiruchirappalli (-0.7), Allahabad (-1.2) and Babatpur, Uttar Pradesh (-1.2). Research on climate trends shows that not just that heat waves are likely to increase but also the number of hottest days will increase significantly if average global temperatures breach the 2 degrees Celsius mark. The Paris climate agreement signed in 2015, committed nations to keep global average temperatures 2 degrees C below pre-industrial levels. “We looked at the temperatures currently seen for the hottest 10% of days per year – at 2C global warming, those temperatures are projected to be seen for up to around half the year,” Richard Betts, climate researcher at the University of Exeter, said.