Heat affects India’s aim to move from coal to renewables: Data

IMD predicts more heat waves in India, impacting agriculture, power demand, and water availability in the upcoming summer.

In what many would have hoped was a Fool’s Day joke, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on April 1 that India will have more than the ‘usual’ number of days with heat waves in the forthcoming summer. The forecast comes against the backdrop of an impending water crisis in the south, Lok Sabha polls, and rising food inflation.

Higher heat is bad for crop yield (to different degrees depending on the crop), agricultural workers’ productivity, and the availability of water.

Map 1 | Map 1A and Map 1B depict the probability of maximum and minimum temperatures, respectively, the IMD expects for April-June 2024.

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It predicted “above-normal” temperatures for the month, with a 55%-65% probability in one half of the country and over 65% in the other half. Very few parts are likely to record normal or below normal temperatures.

Also read: Beat the heat: On the IMD warning of more heatwaves 

Heat increases power demand in urban and industrial centres; makes the consequences of outdoor work, especially at construction sites, deadly; overwhelms health service providers by its effects on the very young and the very old; and places a premium on access to clean, cool water, indoor ventilation, and indoor bathrooms. The availability of power undergirds our ability to respond to all these effects of heat (Chart 2).