In what many would have hoped was a Fool’s Day joke, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on April 1 that India will have more than the ‘usual’ number of days with heat waves in the forthcoming summer. The forecast comes against the backdrop of an impending water crisis in the south, Lok Sabha polls, and rising food inflation.
Higher heat is bad for crop yield (to different degrees depending on the crop), agricultural workers’ productivity, and the availability of water.
Map 1 | Map 1A and Map 1B depict the probability of maximum and minimum temperatures, respectively, the IMD expects for April-June 2024.
