Last decade was India’s hottest on record, with the Indian Meteorological Department calling the effects of global warming “unmistakable” and saying that extreme weather killed more than 1,500 people last year.
India, home to 1.3 billion people, is at the forefront of climate change, suffering devastating floods, dire water shortages and baking temperatures.
The southern city of Chennai last year declared “day zero” as taps ran dry.
Temperatures between 2010 and last year were 0.36°C above the long-term average, the hottest decade since records began in 1901, the department said on Monday.
Extreme weather also claimed more than 1,500 lives last year, the seventh-hottest, it said.
They included 850 people killed by heavy rain and flooding, and another 350 in summer temperatures of up to 51°C, department data showed.
Lighting and storms claimed another 380 lives, the data showed.
India’s five warmest years on record were all in the past decade, with 2016 the hottest.
Eleven of the 15 warmest years were also during the past 15 years, the department said.
The average temperature for last year would have been higher were it not for record cold in northern India last month, it said.
Last year also saw eight cyclones form over the north Indian Ocean — just short of a record 10 last reached in 1976, including five over the Arabian Sea — but equaling the previous high of 1902, the department said.
“The impact of global warming on India is unmistakable,” department Director-General Mrityunjay Mohapatra told the Times of India. “The past year had extreme weather during all seasons.”
The UN last month said that last decade was set to be the planet’s hottest since records began.
Each of the past four decades has been hotter than the preceding one.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and