North India getting hotter, drier; South wetter: IMD study maps 70 years of climate shift

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has released a study mapping the climate shifts that have occurred across India over the last 70 years. According to the research published in the IMD's peer-reviewed journal Mausam, large parts of North India have become hotter and drier, while peninsular India has become wetter. The study redraws India's climate map using data from four major climate zones - hot semi-arid, tropical savannah, tropical monsoon, and temperate - from successive 30-year climatological periods between 1951-1980 and 1991-2020.

The analysis reveals a significant expansion of the hot semi-arid zone in Northwest India, from around 25% to nearly 33% of the region's area during the two periods. Meanwhile, the temperate zone in the same region shrank from approximately a quarter to less than a fifth, indicating that an area equivalent to 7% of the region has shifted into the drier category due to rising temperatures and declining rainfall.

Brief written by urgent.news from The Indian Express's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.