Center for Science and Environment: 255/274 days of extreme weather this year | India News

New Delhi: India will be hit by extreme weather events in 93% of the first nine months (255 out of 274 days) of 2024, claiming 3,238 lives and destroying more than 2.35 million homes and buildings. , 3.2 million hectares (mha) of crops were damaged. The Center for Science and Environment (CSE) announced on Friday that the land area had decreased.
The number of extreme weather events such as heat waves, cold waves, cyclones, lightning strikes, heavy rains, floods and landslides increased in 2024 compared to the first nine months of 2023. According to CSE data, the country recorded 235 out of 273 extreme weather events. During the same period last year, 2,923 people were killed, crops on 1.84 hectares of land were affected and 80,293 houses were damaged.
In its annual “Extreme Weather Situation Report”, the New Delhi-based think tank states that Madhya Pradesh experienced 176 days of abnormal weather, the most in the country, while Kerala had the highest number of cases at 550. India recorded the highest number of deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh. This year, it was 353) and Assam (256).
Also read: Crops damaged in over 200,000 hectares in West Bengal from January to September
According to the report, the state with the highest number of damaged homes was Andhra Pradesh (85,806), and the state of Maharashtra, where the extreme event occurred on the 142nd, accounted for more than 60% of the damaged cropped area nationwide. , followed by Madhya Pradesh in 2024.
“This trend is no longer a hypothesis, but an escalation of the crisis we face today. This report is not good news, but it is a necessary warning, and it is important to understand the backlash of nature and how to mitigate it.” Today’s challenges will only get worse tomorrow if we do not fight climate change on a meaningful scale,” said CSE Director Sunita Narain.
Also read: Extreme weather claims more than 3,200 lives in first nine months of this year
Regional data shows that central India had the highest frequency of extreme weather events at 218 days, followed by northwestern India with 213 days. In terms of lives lost, the central region (1,001) had the highest loss, followed by the southern peninsula (762), the east and northeast (741), and the northwest (734).
However, CSE analysts noted that the reported damages may be an underestimate due to incomplete data collection on event-specific losses, particularly damage to public property and crops.
Citing other climate records for 2024, the CSE said that while January was the ninth driest in India since 1901, February recorded the second-highest minimum temperature in the past 123 years. He pointed out that he did. Meanwhile, May had the fourth highest average temperature on record, and July, August, and September all recorded their lowest temperatures since 1901.

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