New year starts on warmer note with highest avg temp in 5 years
MUMBAI: The new year started on a warmer than usual note for the city, with both day and nighttime temperatures touching their highest average readings in at least five years, as per India Meteorological Department (IMD) data for the first six days of January.
The average daily maximum temperature between January 1 and January 6 this year stood at 32.8 degrees Celsius as compared to 30.22 degrees Celsius in 2021, while the average daily minimum stood at 21 degrees Celsius, up from 20.62 degrees Celsius in 2021.
This is the highest average maximum recorded in the first week of January since 2016 when Mumbai saw daytime temperatures touch a mean of 33.64 degrees Celsius. In terms of minimum temperature, this year marks the highest average in at least 10 years and indicates the possibility that this January may turn out to be one of the warmest in recent years.
Confirming this trend, DS Pai, who heads the climate research and services division at IMD in Pune, said, “This has everything to do with wind direction. If you look at the wind patterns above Mumbai and the larger Konkan, winds are not blowing directly from colder regions up north, and are sometimes blowing from the south, sometimes from the east. So, there is a phenomenon of advection which is bringing heat into the region, instead of cooling it down,” said Pai. Mumbai’s maximum temperature on Thursday stood at 29.5 degrees Celsius, down from 31.5 degrees Celsius the day prior, while the minimum stood at 21 degrees Celsius, down from 21.4 degrees Celsius the day prior. As per the IMD’S seven-day forecast for the city, the daytime maximum will hover between 30 and 31 degrees Celsius until January 12. The nighttime minimum during this period will range between 20 and 21 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, air quality dipped over the last two days and entered the ‘poor’ category of the air quality index (AQI). The AQI on Thursday evening stood at 225, close to the previous day’s index value of 228.
“Poor air quality is typical at this time of the year because winds are not strong enough to disperse the accumulated particulate matter pollutants,” said an IMD official.