The winter in India in 2017 will be colder than the temperature drop experienced in 2016, the India Meteorological Department said on Thursday.
However, maximum and minimum temperatures across the country between December 2017 and February 2018 are likely to be warmer than normal. “The season’s mean temperatures in most of the subdivisions are likely to be cooler than last year,” IMD Director General K J Ramesh was quoted as saying by PTI.
The 2016-17 winter season was the fourth warmest recorded since 1901, the weather monitoring agency said. “There is moderate, that is 40%, probability of minimum temperatures in the core cold wave zone during the season to be above normal.”
Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, Marathwada, Vidarbha, Saurashtra and central Maharashtra fall in the zone.
The agency said that its analysis of minimum temperature data across the country in the last four decades suggested that the frequency and duration of cold waves in many parts of India was decreasing, a pattern also witnessed in many parts of the world.
“One of the reasons behind the decreasing trend in the cold waves is global warming,” the department said. “However, the ocean conditions over the equatorial Indian and Pacific oceans also contribute to the year-to-year variability of cold waves over the country.”
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