New Delhi, Apr 20 (PTI) The relatively lower rise in temperatures across India compared to the average global temperature increase could be due to high aerosol concentrations and irrigation, according to a new study.
While India’s land mass has seen a temperature rise of 0.88 degrees Celsius between 1980 and 1990 and 2014-2025, the global land temperature has increased by about 1.4 degrees Celsius over the same period, the paper stated.
The study, ‘Critical Perspectives On Extreme Heat in India’, was published by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University and released on Monday.
It addresses issues that came up during an interdisciplinary conference in Delhi last year titled “India 2047: Building a Climate-Resilient Future,” organised by Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, and India’s Environment Ministry.
The analysis highlighted that winter daytime temperatures in northern India show weaker warming than the national average, and in some areas a distinct cooling trend can be observed, especially in January.
October, November, and December also show less warming over northern India than the national average.
This could be because of two reasons.
One, due to aerosols, which refer to all kinds of particles suspended in the atmosphere, and are emitted from crop-residue burning, industry, traffic, and cooking.
Aerosols scatter sunlight back, so that the land absorbs less heat. They also affect cloud formation, and clouds, in turn, impact how much sunlight is reflected or absorbed.
As a result, aerosols can cool temperatures during the daytime, according to the study.
Two, northern India is heavily irrigated, which helps cool the near-surface air through evapotranspiration — combined processes that move water from the Earth’s surface into the atmosphere.
The study noted that both aerosol concentration and irrigation intensity could fall in the following years, leading to accelerated warming over northern India.
While aerosol concentration may decline under a clean-air policy, irrigation intensity could drop due to reduced groundwater availability.
“The combination of continued greenhouse gas accumulation and weakening of transient suppression from aerosols and irrigation creates conditions in which warming over the Indo-Gangetic Plain could accelerate relative to the rates observed since 1980,” the study mentioned. PTI ALC MPL MPL
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