Summer heat returned with Northwest India and East India battling extreme temperatures. New Delhi touched 43.8°C, Bhatinda 47.6°C, Ganganagar 47.4°C, Amritsar 44.8°C, Rohtak 46.1°C, and Lucknow 42.7°C, HT reported. In east India, Patna recorded 40.4°C, while Kolkata recorded 36.3°C with over 60% relative humidity (RH), the newspaper said. Heat wave conditions are likely to continue over Northwest India with severe heat wave conditions at isolated pockets over West Rajasthan till June 12, the outlet said.
PTI reported that India’s heatwaves are worsening but no one knows how many are dying. There’s no reliable data on heat deaths in India as reporting systems are not uniformly strong across the country, said Health Ministry Advisor Soumya Swaminathan while speaking at India Heat Summit 2025.
Floods, landslides kill 46 in Northeast India; flash flood kills 6 in Meghalaya
Unprecedented rainfall gripped Northeast India causing floods and landslides, with several villages submerged and roads cut off. “As of June 5, 46 people had lost their lives, across the seven states in the region,” reported Mongabay India.
Guwahati recorded 111 mm rainfall between May 30 and May 31 (city’s highest May rainfall ever). Silchar recorded 415.8 mm rainfall in 24 hours on May 31, breaking its 132-year-old record of 290.3 mm over 24 hours in 1893, the news site reported. Sohra and Mawsynrum in Meghalaya saw more than 470 mm rainfall on May 31 while Tezpur and North Lakhimpur in Assam saw over 150 mm rainfall during the same period.
Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) said 2,37,783 villages are affected in 19 districts with 41,415 people taking shelter in 385 relief camps across the state. In Manipur 165,000 people remain affected by the deluge, particularly in Imphal’s eastern part, the outlet reported.
Heavy rains on May 30-31, 2025, battered Meghalaya, impacting 86 villages in 10 districts, DTE reported, six people died, including two children struck by lightning in Kentapara. Districts of Ri Bhoi, East Khasi Hills, and West Garo Hills were among the hardest hit, with flash floods, landslides, and storm damage displacing thousands.
‘Unusually cooler’ May records highest rainfall since 1901
May this year was “unusually cooler” with average daytime temperatures recording the seventh lowest for the month since 1901 and the lowest in the past four years, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), reported HT. May 2025 recorded the 59th lowest average minimum temperatures for the month since 1901.
The newspaper said the weather office highlighted that the average rainfall across the country in May, recorded at 126.7 mm (106.4% of the long period average), was the highest for the month since 1901, when the temperatures first began recording. This May also recorded the highest number of heavy (64.5 to 115.5 mm) rain events at 1,053; very heavy (115.6 to 204.5 mm) rain events at 262; and extremely heavy (more than 204.5 mm) rain events at 39, in the past five years, barring 2021, when the number of extremely heavy rain events was higher at 42.
According to the newspaper more Western Disturbances (WDs) impacted northern India. The outlet explained: “May has been unusual for northwest India, particularly because of persistence of slow-moving western disturbances over the region. WDs are cyclones originating in the Mediterranean Sea which move east and bring winter rain to northwest India. The impact of WDs is felt normally during December, January and February, but this year they have been active till late May. A persistence of WDs is normally deemed unfavourable for the monsoon, according to experts.”
Expect a hotter and wetter monsoon across South Asia and Tibet this year: ICIMOD
Temperatures will be around 2°C hotter than average in addition to above-average rainfall this summer monsoon, in the entire Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region warned a new analysis of global and national meteorological agencies’ data released by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) on June 11, 2025, DTE reported. Temperature rise, combined with wetter monsoons, can also raise the risk of heat stress and waterborne disease outbreaks, such as dengue, according to the report.
Temperature rise was predicted for nearly all countries across the HKH region including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tibet (China), Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan, but more worrying for experts is the probability of a wetter monsoon across the region.
India, Nepal, and Pakistan as well as China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region are expected to receive above-average rainfall, as per the report. “Strong probability that southwest monsoon seasonal precipitation will be above normal,” the report said about India. The same is the forecast for Nepal.
The report sounded a call to the region to brace “for a possible rise in climate risks and impacts”, given that close to three-quarters (72.5 per cent) of all floods from 1980 to 2024 have occurred during the summer monsoon season. “Rising temperatures and more extreme rain raise the risk of water-induced disasters such as floods, landslides, and debris flows, and have longer-term impacts on glaciers, snow reserves, and permafrost. Lower rainfall, meanwhile, particularly in water-stressed countries such as Afghanistan, may pose risks to food and water security in a country with already extraordinarily high levels of malnutrition,” the report continued.
Heatwave days to double in Delhi, Chennai & these 6 Indian cities by 2030
Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Surat, Thane, Hyderabad, Patna and Bhubaneswar may witness a two-fold increase in heatwave days by 2030, according to a new study by development consulting firm IPE Global and GIS technology provider Esri India, DTE reported.
The report titled Weathering the Storm: Managing Monsoons in a Warming Climate offers a district-level assessment of the correlation between extreme heat and erratic rainfall in India.
Incessant and erratic rainfall will become more frequent in 8 out of 10 districts in India, the report noted.
1.8 billion people in South Asia face extreme heat risks by 2030: World Bank report
According to a new World Bank research, nearly 1.8 billion people in South Asia will face extreme heat risks by 2030, but market failures and income constraints are forcing them to rely on basic adaptation measures, reported HT. South Asia is the most climate-vulnerable region among emerging market and developing economies, the WB report said. Temperature projections show that by 2030, approximately 89% of South Asia’s population will face extreme heat risks. In 2021, an average of six hours a day were too hot to safely work outside in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. That is expected to rise to seven or eight hours a day by 2050. More than 60% of households and firms surveyed have experienced extreme weather in the last five years, and more than 75% expect it for the next decade.
World’s oceans at record high temperatures as CO2 levels rise
The global ocean temperatures reached their second-highest level on record for May, “capping an alarming two-year streak of rapid warming and fuelling concerns about the seas’ ability to absorb rising levels of carbon dioxide”, reported FT. The newspaper cited the European Union’s climate change service, Corpenicus data stating that “the global average sea surface temperature in May was 20.79C, 0.14C below the record in the same month in 2024”. The outlet explained that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere peaked globally at the mean of 426 parts per million (ppm) in March, up from 423ppm a year ago, and surpassed 430ppm at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The greenhouse gas concentration has risen from about 300ppm over the past 60 years, FT report said.
Marine heatwave found to have engulfed area of ocean five times the size of Australia
The Guardian reported that an area five times the size of Australia was hit by a marine heatwave in 2024. A new paper from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found the heatwave impacted almost 40m sq kilometres of ocean around south-east Asia and the Pacific, The outlet noted. “WMO scientists said the record heat – on land and in the ocean – was mostly driven by the climate crisis and coincided with a string of extreme weather events, from deadly landslides in the Philippines to floods in Australia and rapid glacier loss in Indonesia,” the article said, adding that the region was 0.48°C hotter in 2024, than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020.
Canadian wildfire smoke causes air quality hazards in the US and reaches Europe
According to a Le Monde report, smoke from Canadian wildfires has continued to hamper air quality in the US Midwest, as well as causing “huge plumes of smoke” to reach Europe. The wildfires have forced the evacuation of more than 26,000 people, and continued their “stubborn spread”, “with heavy smoke choking millions of Canadians and Americans and reaching as far away as Europe”, the newspaper said.
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