Pleasant weather cools India after the heat of early March. Temperatures are dropping sharply, preventing one of the warmest months on record, IMD data show.
The mild weather in most parts of India over the past week marks a sharp turn from the unseasonably warm first half of March, preventing the month from becoming one of the hottest on record, an HT analysis of gridded data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows. Here’s how.
Overall, this is the 28th warmest day in March so far in terms of maximum temperature…
According to IMD grid data, the average maximum temperature in India in the first 22 days of March is 31.35 degrees Celsius. This is only the 28th highest number for this period since 1951, the first year the IMD published gridded data. It is also close to the normal of 30.89°C, which the IMD considers to be the average for the period 1981-2010.
The month certainly remains very warm in terms of minimum temperatures. The average minimum temperature ranks seventh and is 1.10°C above normal.
…But it was the sixth warmest in terms of maximum temperature in the first two weeks
While March appears, on average, to be relatively normal in terms of maximum temperatures – a key metric as summer approaches – this was not the case at the beginning of the month. For example, the 40°C threshold in gridded data was breached by March 6, or the 65th day of the year, the third oldest such breach since 1951.
The average maximum temperature in the first 14 days of the month was 32.33°C, the sixth highest temperature for this period, and 2.08°C above normal.
The overall average has declined due to the sharp shift after March 14
The country’s average maximum temperature was above normal for all of the first 14 days of March, with a peak positive deviation of 3.03°C on 5 March. Conditions have changed dramatically since the middle of the month. The anomaly shifted from 0.99°C above normal on March 14 to 0.71°C below normal on March 15.
Maximum temperatures remained below normal on all subsequent days, with a peak negative anomaly of 4.28°C on 20 March. These sharp downward deviations have pushed down the overall average for the month.
The transformation has occurred in almost all parts of the country.
This can be seen in the attached maps. Only about 7% of the country was colder than normal in the first 14 days of March. In the subsequent eight days, 89% of the country was colder than normal, while only 11% was warmer than normal.
The upward and downward anomalies were certainly less pronounced in the peninsula and central India. This may be due to the lack of westerly disturbances – storms originating in the Mediterranean region that bring rain to northern India at this time of the year – resulting in exceptional warmth in the first half of the month. This is due to the rain and cloud cover brought frequently by these systems, which subsequently causes lower maximum temperatures. These systems usually do not have much influence in central India and rarely affect peninsular India.
