Summer 2023 temperature higher by 0.5ºC in Telangana, many states

Hyderabad: Remember some of those searingly hot days during the summer of 2023? It wasn’t just those in Hyderabad who experienced some really hot weather last year. The year 2023 has been declared as the warmest on record with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) on Tuesday confirming that that global average near-surface temperature averaged at around 1.45º Celsius more than ever before.

This summer may be as bad, even though whether there is a further increase in the average temperature will be known at the end of the season.

Large parts of western, southern and eastern India logged an average increase of between 0.25 and 0.5ºC last year, according to WMO’s State of Global Climate report that was released on Tuesday. The parts of the country that experienced this phenomenon last year include Telangana and Andhra Pradesh as well as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal while some northwestern and northern regions experienced an average increase of between 0.5 and 1ºC during 2023. “As greenhouse gases concentrations rise, so do global mean surface temperatures,” the report said.

Even as the WMO put down 2023 as the warmest year for the world, the Indian Meteorological Department during the first of this March, predicted that most parts of India can expect above-normal temperatures during the ‘hot weather season 2024’ that falls between March and May.

The monthly maximum temperatures for March 2024 are most likely to be above normal over most areas of Indian peninsula, northeast and west central India and many areas of northwest India. On the other hand, normal to below normal maximum temperatures are most likely over most parts of east and east central India and some parts of northwest India, the IMD had said.