Winters bid adieu to India in the first half of February, paving the way for unusually early summers. With the spring season absent for yet another year, India has already begun its tryst with heatwaves quite early in the season. Despite last year’s La Niña conditions that typically cool global temperatures, global warming is reshaping long-standing weather patterns. In 2025, the all-India annual mean land surface air temperature was 0.28°C higher than the 1991–2020 long-term average. This made 2025, inspite of being a La Niña year, the eighth warmest year since 1901.
This is not the first time global warming has outmuscled La Niña. Since 2020, four years have carried La Niña conditions, including an exceptional triple-dip event that persisted from the summer of 2020 through early 2023 — one of the longest on record. Under normal circumstances, La Niña would have pulled global temperatures down. Instead, relentless greenhouse gas emissions kept pushing them up, and each of those years still found its place among the warmest in recorded history. The heat has arrived early and with little warning. Since the second half of February, temperatures across Northwest India have climbed well above seasonal norms, with isolated pockets already breaching heatwave thresholds and a growing number of stations placed on alert.
With this, the spring season has once again remained absent from the Indian subcontinent. The India Meteorological Department has left little room for optimism — above-normal heatwave days are forecast across most of the country for the entire March-to-May season. On March 10, Mumbai sizzled at 40°C, which was above the normal average by 7.6 degrees. With this, the city qualified for severe heatwave conditions. “Persistent anti-cyclonic circulation over Gujarat and adjoining areas has been pushing warm easterly winds towards the city and delaying the sea breeze, which brings down the temperatures across the city. While the system has now moved away, bringing respite but we have a bigger problem to deal with.
This is a natural phenomenon that will keep recurring at regular intervals. However, the point to be noted is that under the warming climatic conditions, the city would be subjected to an increased number of heatwave days in the future as average temperatures are already high, ”said Mahesh Palawat, Vice President – Meteorology and Climate Change, Skymet Weather. Maximum temperatures in Delhi-NCR have been hovering around 35°C, which is five to seven degrees above average. Night temperatures are also settling three to four degrees above average, around 17°C.
Heatwave to severe heatwave conditions have gripped isolated pockets of Himachal Pradesh, with day maximum temperatures recorded markedly above normal by 5.1°C-8°C. Another region reeling under heatwave conditions is Vidarbha in Maharashtra, where temperatures are above normal by 3.1°C-5°C. Palawat said the season will only get hotter in the coming days, “We do not see any respite in the coming days from the rising heat. Infact, the heatwave will now increase its ambit and cover more areas of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. There will also be no respite for coastal areas along the East and West Coasts as they will struggle with hot and humid weather.
Temperatures may not cross the heatwave threshold, but the weather would be extremely sultry due to increased wet bulb temperature.” Coastal areas have been witnessing hot and humid weather conditions, which further indicate the gradual rise in the relative humidity. A rise in moisture results in a steep rise in the feel-like temperature, also known as Wet Bulb Temperatures. When the human body temperature exceeds 37°C (or 100°F), perspiration helps cool it down; however, high humidity slows this process, making it harder for the body to release heat. This can increase the occurrence of several heat-related illnesses and fatalities. WHAT IS HEATWAVE?
According to the IMD, a Heatwave is a period of elevated air temperatures that can be fatal when people are exposed. It is defined based on the temperature thresholds over a region in terms of actual temperature or its departure from normal.
WINTER IS GETTING SHORTER�AND HOTTER
Continuing a trend seen in recent years, both the Himalayan states and the Indo-Gangetic Plains saw little in the way of winter rains or snowfall from the start of the season in December. January offered no early relief either, remaining largely dry until two successive Western Disturbances brought back-to-back wet spells — first from January 21 to 24, and again from January 26 to 28 — finally breaking the prolonged dry stretch across north and central India. February stood out as the driest of the three winter months, recording an 81% rainfall deficiency — just 4.2 mm against a seasonal normal of 22.7 mm. Paradoxically, this occurred despite an above-average number of Western Disturbances passing through the Western Himalayas.
Nine such systems moved across North India, nearly double the usual five or six, yet most were too weak to deliver meaningful precipitation. Only three produced any rainfall or hailstorm activity, and even that was limited to lightsp ells across the plains of northwest and central India. Temporary cooling by La Niña does not reverse the long-term trend. The year 2025 began and ended with La Niña, but it was one of the three warmest years on record, continuing the streak of extraordinary global temperature. The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record , and ocean heating continues unabated. According to scientists, the La Niña led cooling impact was brief and that it was not able to reverse the long-term warming trend caused by record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.
“La Niña is a climate pattern marked by colder-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that tend to suppress global temperatures. Global warming and changing climatic conditions tend to play a major role, which can be temporarily governed by these ENSO conditions but cannot completely outplay the effects of climate change. Apparently, all the naturally occurring climate events like El Nino, La Niña and the Indian Ocean Dipole are now severely affected by human induced climate change,” said G P Sharma , President– Meteorology and Climate Change, Skymet Weather. “There is no doubt that climate change has reformed some of the typical impacts of La Niña.
La Niña pulls down global temperatures, but a consistent rise in global temperatures in recent years has outgrown the cooling effect induced by the phenomenon. Even if the ocean temperatures were reducing due to La Nina , at the rate global warming is increasing, we hardly get to see the impact of the former,” added Palawat. L a Niña is defined as an oceanic-atmospheric phenomenon, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), wherein water temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean become cooler than normal because of the upwelling of cold water from the bottom of the sea.
La Niña has the capacity to alter direction as well as the velocity of the tradewinds, which trigger the winter season in India. La Niña has an association with winter rains over North India. Unlike El Niño, it may not have a strong correlation with seasonal features but remains consequential for the seasonal performance. The Indian Ocean warming turns out to be the largest contributor in phase with the overall trend in the global mean Sea Surface Temperatures (SST). According to a study‘ Future projections for the tropical Indian Ocean’, post-1950, a few warm events over the Indian Ocean have attained the threshold value for El Niño (SST anomalies greater than 0.77°C). This places these warm events almost on par with the El Niños in magnitude.
Considering the long-term persistence of these events, the Indian Ocean warming scenario and related climate dynamics are factors to be vigilant of, while assessing long-term climate change and variability. While the Indian Ocean warmed at a rate of 1.2°C per century during 1950–2020, climate models predict accelerated warming, at a rate of 1.7 °C –3.8°C per century during 2000–2100. As climate change accelerates global warming, the reliability of natural climate cycles such as La Niña and El Niño is increasingly being disrupted, making seasonal weather patterns far more unpredictable. Rising temperatures are altering atmospheric circulation, weakening traditional cooling influences, and worsening meteorological conditions across the region.
For India, this means more frequent and intense heat waves, erratic rainfall, shorter winters, and growing climate extremes that affect health, agriculture, water resources, and economic productivity. The emerging pattern is clear: climate change is no longer a distant risk but a present and intensifying force reshaping India’s seasons and amplifying vulnerabilities across the country.
(A REPORT BY CLIMATE TRENDS. CLIMATE TRENDS IS A RESEARCH-BASED CONSULTING AND CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVE THAT AIMS TO BRING GREATER FOCUS ON ISSUES OF ENVIRONMENT, CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.)