Temperatures rise in Telangana weeks ahead of summer

Hyderabad: The official start of the summer season – March 1 – may still be three weeks away but if the temperatures being recorded are any indication, this year’s summer may turn into yet another sizzler for Telangana and much of the rest of the country.

On Wednesday, according to temperature data from the Telangana Development Planning Society, all the 33 districts in the state recorded more than what they did on February 5 last year.

While temperatures recorded in individual locations in 22 districts reached a high of 37 degrees Celsius, eight districts had marginally lower temperatures at 36.9 degrees Celsius, and two recorded 36.8 degrees Celsius. The lowest high for the day in the state was from Hyderabad at 35.1 degrees Celsius reported from the Azampura GHMC ward office in Amberpet.

The average highs for each of the districts on Wednesday rose between 2.4 degrees celsius and 3.8 degrees on Wednesday, as per Telangana Development and Planning Society reports. And last year, the hottest day of the summer season was recorded on May 31, the official last day of the season of heat, with officials reporting that Mancherial had recorded a scorching 47.2 degrees Celsius.

How exactly will this summer be, whether hot, or hotter than last year, is yet uncertain with the IMD yet to speak on this issue. But things may not be as bad as is being believed, given the fact that last year saw some record-breaking heat days in the country. Despite this being the case, this year, the news may not be as hard to take.

Things may not be as bad as it is believed they might be, according to Dr Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science & Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK.

Though the general feeling is that this year could be hotter than the last for the planet, this is consistent with what scientists have been saying for the last two years. For India, however, the situation will depend on how ‘Western Disturbances’ (WD) develop and shape up, Dr Deoras said.

The WDs are weather disturbances that begin from as far away as Black Sea located in eastern Europe, the Caspian Sea to the east of Black Sea and on Iran’s north, and sometimes even further west starting over the Atlantic Ocean. These WDs bring cloud cover and with them rain and even snow over north India during winters. “Though these systems occur round the year, a handful of these may develop during the summer months and when they do, tend to reduce summer heating,” he said.

For instance, last year during summer when the forecasts said a month might be really hot, it was just the opposite because of the influence of these disturbances. “Maybe they will do the same by this June like last year which saw temperatures rise from mid-May,” he said.

The bottom line, as of now, is that predicting WDs is a big challenge and climate models don’t pick them quite well. If you scan models from different agencies, you will see that the summer temperatures in India will be normal or above normal. And this is typically what we would expect at this time, Dr Deoras said.