India’s Warming Trend Understated by IMD Revisions

A simple calculation shows that the change in LPA has reduced the reported anomaly for 2010 by 0.54°C. If we apply this correction to 2024’s reported anomaly of +0.65°C, it suggests the actual deviation from the 1961–1990 LPA could be as high as +1.19°C.

Missing data 

Further complicating matters, IMD’s annual summaries do not disclose the actual recorded temperature for the year or the LPA temperature — only the anomaly. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to track trends or compare data across years, especially when the LPA keeps changing.

Some media reports quoting IMD Director-General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, stated that the mean temperature for 2024 was 25.75°C. But this figure is lower than the 25.8°C recorded in 2010 — raising questions about whether 2024 was indeed the warmest year on record, or if the change in methodology is driving the narrative.

The confusion extends to 2016, now listed as the second warmest year. According to IMD statistics available on the central government’s open access portal for socio-economic and environmental data, 2016 had a mean temperature of 26.2°C — roughly 0.45°C higher than 2024’s reported value.

Visible impact of warming

Regardless of how warming is measured, its impacts are becoming increasingly visible. In 2024, India experienced extreme weather events on 322 out of 366 days, according to data from the interactive extreme weather atlas managed by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth (DTE). This marked an increase from 318 days in 2023 and 314 days in 2022.

In percentage terms, nearly 88 per cent of the year saw extreme weather in one or more parts of the country, up from 87 per cent in 2023 and 86 per cent in 2022.

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