Extreme weather events in India 2024: Heatwaves, avoidable deaths and an uncertain future

The past year, 2024, has been marked by extraordinary weather patterns, establishing itself as the hottest year in India since records began in 1901. The capital city, Delhi, recorded unprecedented temperatures soaring to 52.3°C, marking its most intense heatwave in 74 years. Throughout March and May, India was engulfed by heatwaves that lasted for 54 days. Concurrently, the nation experienced other weather adversities, with lightning, floods, and landslides affecting the nation for 71 and 40 days respectively.

The spectrum of these pre-monsoon events signals a harsh reality that what were once considered anomalies have become commonplace throughout the year, with extreme weather conditions recorded on almost 88% of the year’s days. Such adverse weather instances have claimed over 3,000 lives and wreaked havoc on agriculture, demolishing 3.2 million hectares of crops and displacing more than 235,000 households, while also leading to the loss of over 9,000 livestock. As 2025 approaches summer, reflecting on the bygone year highlights alarming patterns of extreme weather occurrences.

In its annual climate summary for 2024, the India Meteorological Department confirmed the year’s extreme heat records, stating it as the warmest since the early 20th century. The summer or pre-monsoon season typically spans from March to May but extended to a prolonged 92 days in 2024. Within these months, heatwaves were a distressingly common occurrence, recorded on 54 days. Although the national temperature averages remained close to normal, Southern India felt the brunt of this heat, recording its third highest maximum temperature at 35.2°C and its second highest minimum temperature at 23.3°C. Particularly affected were regions like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Sikkim, and Jammu and Kashmir, where temperatures rose nearly 1°C above normal.

The decade spanning 2015 to 2024 was the warmest on record, with an annual mean temperature anomaly of 0.31°C. This trend, underscored by the “Heat Watch 2024” report, highlighted disturbingly high instances of heat-induced fatalities. Between March and June, a reported 733 people succumbed to heatstroke across 17 states. A comparative analysis against government data presented at the 18th LoSAA session indicated a significant discrepancy, with official figures citing 360 deaths, highlighting a critical gap and oversight in reporting.

This gap underscores significant inadequacies in adhering to the guidelines set forth by the National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health, as well as recommendations from the National Centre for Disease Control aimed at mitigating climate change impacts. The lack of information and appropriate infrastructure hinders the nation’s capacity to combat heat-related health crises. Many healthcare facilities lack the resources and awareness needed to deal with the surges in temperature, and healthcare personnel remain largely uninformed about existing guidelines, which has led to preventable losses.

Among the recommendations, establishing heat desks equipped with water supplies, ambulances, air-conditioned facilities, and other essential cooling measures is paramount. Adhering to such measures could have potentially prevented the tragic fatalities, such as those of 33 election officials who succumbed to heatstroke during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Looking towards 2025, the continuation of extreme heat is anticipated, with January temperatures already registering 0.9°C higher than the previous year. The pervasive reliance on fossil fuels continues to escalate greenhouse gas emissions, posing significant challenges to contain global temperature rise beneath the 2°C threshold established by the Paris Agreement. Further complicating matters, the once significant cooling impact of La Niña is being overshadowed by the persistent heatwaves saturating the oceans, raising serious concerns among scientists.

Without substantial intervention to reverse the path of global warming, the planet might continue to experience progressively severe weather conditions year after year. This underscores the urgent need for radical action aimed at cooling the Earth’s climate to secure a sustainable future for forthcoming generations.