Are India’s Heatwaves Getting Hotter?
By Paul Homewood
I want to return to that Economist article:
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/04/02/global-warming-is-killing-indians-and-pakistanis
It is of course widely believed that India’s heatwaves are getting worse, as the media keep telling us it is so.
But are they?
Below is the KNMI chart of daily maximum temperatures in Delhi, on the edge of the Safdarjan Airport there:
The airport is only used now for helicopter flights now, and the surrounding area is a well off, leafy suburb. In other words, it’s about as good a quality site as you are likely to get in New Delhi:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/homr/#ncdcstnid=30045637&tab=LOCATIONS
It is not immediately apparent from the KNMI chart that there has been any noticeable temperature increase in the hottest days, although as we often see elsewhere extreme cold days appear to be less common. We can drill down into the KNMI data to get a clearer impression:
Bear in mind that there is no data between 1946 and 1957, and also between 1932 and 1973. Given that fact, there is clearly nothing unprecedented about heatwaves in recent years. The record temperature was set in 1989, with 1991 in second place. And 1944 & 1945 both feature heavily as well.
The hottest day since 2002 was in May 2020, when temperatures hit 46C. But there have been fifteen other days as hot or hotter in Safdarjan.
Monthly mean temperatures at Safdarjan also show no increase:
https://climexp.knmi.nl/gettempall.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&WMO=42182&STATION=NEW_DELHI/&extraargs=
Much of the media coverage of heatwaves in India and elsewhere report on temperatures in urban areas, which inevitably have been trending upwards for decades in cities like Delhi. The Economist report acknowledges that UHI can easily add 2C to underlying temperatures:
The situation is well summed up by this chap, who responded to the WHO’s Dr Neira’s tweet:
https://twitter.com/DrMariaNeira/status/1642916105508225026
CSIR_NEERI is, by the way, India’s pioneering research institute in the field of environment science and engineering.
As the guy says, they would rather have the benefits of civilisation, even if it results in marginally higher temperatures.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This site is quite good for showing the average temperatures .
http://temperature.global/
It uses unadjusted temperature readings from thousands of sites around the world .And as yet , has not been taken over by the Global Warming nutters .
It only has accurate readings for the last 30 years , but shows that the world is not getting hotter , and the last 8 years have all been below average .
Thousands? The earth has 197 million square miles of surface area. The earth’s troposphere is 8 miles high.
We know nothing.
If we know nothing, why are we spending trillions?
To destroy Western civilization – the last barrier to global, world government.
I don’t think Mr Putin will agree to that, which is probably why the EU/US/WEF started the war against Russia. Shame they didn’t think about munitions production when they did….
ITRW, you wouldn’t know a site where i can easily access sea surface temperatures for the North Atlantic. I want to look at the temperature blip during the Battle of the Atlantic so I need to look at stations on the dge of Norway, Faroes, Ireland, Greenland etc.
TIA.
JF
Julian , I have not got any links to a site which reliably records ocean temperatures .
Over the last 40 odd years most of the temperature readings are taken from bouys , and these are nearly all adjusted figures .
The claim is that these are different to the older method of ships taking temperatures , and the figures are adjusted upwards because of that . [ YEAH RIIIGHT ].
So to find somewhere to get accurate sea temp readings might be difficult .
Happy Easter. Thanks for another great article, Paul, that counteracts the climate change propaganda.
I love India. A great place with great people. Whether the temperature is rising a little or not India still burns coal. And why not when the alternative is masses of people living in absolute poverty.
The likes of which the west worked to get out of and leave behind years ago. Why we tolerate globalists that wish to return us to cold, dark miserable times is beyond me.
Send the BBC fact checkers to live in the slums under a tin roof for a couple of years. They may not be so critical of fossil fuels after that.
For a survival of plants and animals, the minimum and maximum temperatures are much more important than an average temperature.
And for each it’s their local temp. GMT affects absolutely NO ONE, Man nor beast.
Paul
re:Indian heat
have a look around the accounts of military campaigns in the 19th Century.
Extraordinary troop casualties / tragedies through heat stroke exhaustion.
TBF, this doesn’t really answer the question. If previously a heatwave was say 5 consecutive days over 40 degrees and that happened twice a year, and now we see 6 consecutive days and it happens 3 times a year, heatwaves are getting worse. And maximums don’t tell the whole story either. A day that hits 40 for a hort time but either side is 30 is very different from a day that hits 40 and either side is 39 for most of the day. We should calculate average temperature over a period using hourly temperatures perhaps.
” We should calculate average temperature over a period using hourly temperatures perhaps.”
It could make potentially huge changes to current perceptions. A long read but where this was done it produced markedly different results to the present system.
https://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/?section=menu&%20target=calculating_daily_mean_temperature#:~:text=The%20convention%20of%20the%20weather,period%20and%20dividing%20by%20two.
“We should calculate average temperature over a period using hourly temperatures perhaps.”
If one were to actually care about India’s weather.
Whilst we might increase the monitoring of temperature and weather with more sophisticated equipment, there are pitfalls in comparing such data as ‘like for like’ with earlier, more sparse data, using less sophisticated equipment. The current obsessive measuring and computer modelling is driven by an agenda to topple free capitalism. TPTB want to move to the CCP model. Power corrupts and if allowed, will always move towards totalitarianism.