The onset of spring has always been a welcome event, especially for people in parts of the world where winters are cold and severe. Poets talk about it and various socio-cultural events are organized to mark the season of rising temperatures and rebirth. One example is Easter.

However, in the hot tropical country of India, it would be surprising if I told you that there are millions of people praying for warmth this year, even before the winter season!

In a direct contradiction of doomsday predictions for global warming, many parts of India have experienced one of their mildest summers and an abundant rainfall season that is nowhere near ending.

Warmth, please!

The city where I live, Bangalore, in India’s southern tip, experienced a very mild summer, accompanied by ample rainfall. The elevated landscape of the city — 3,000 feet above sea level — contributed further to the lower temperatures, thus remaining below average during the only season in the year where residents expect hot weather.

With a majority of the population still lacking access to electric dryers, washed clothes took days to dry, prompting city dwellers to lament about it on Twitter. Neither did the melancholic weather suit many migrants who are used to scorching hot weather in other parts of the country.

Many prayed for warm weather, a rare prayer in a city that usually promotes its cooler conditions over surrounding cities in southern India as a welcome relief. In fact, relatively cool weather is one of the major factors for increased migration to Bangalore, the information technology capital of the country.

A Cool Summer, Non-Stop Rainfall and Record Crop Output

And it was not just Bangalore that experienced a cool summer in India. Chennai, Kolkata, and many other regions across the country experienced lower-than-normal daytime temperatures from April to June, a time when they ordinarily record their maximum temperatures for the year.

To make things more interesting, India’s two monsoon seasons have occurred without a gap this year. Usually, citizens get a respite from monsoon rains in late September and early October. But this year, the summer monsoon extended all the way to October, the second most delayed withdrawal in 41 years.

The winter monsoon has been predicted to begin right at the heels of the previous one in October’s second week. So technically, people in some parts of the country will enjoy a non-stop rainfall season that began in June. Reservoirs have become full in the agricultural hotspots of southern India and above-normal rainfall ensured enough water for farmers in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous.

The Indian Metrological Department has declared the monsoon rainfalls as normal, indicating a healthy rainfall which would further increase the country’s agricultural output to record levels. 

Record Rainfall, Record Cold Weather, and More in Delhi

The country’s capital, the northern city of Delhi, has been experiencing some of the coldest winters in the past three, breaking 100-year-old records for minimum temperatures. Last month, precipitation in Delhi — situated on Uttar Pradesh’s western border — broke the city’s record for the highest rainfall during September.

“The capital gauged 413mm (16.3 inches) of rainfall in September, the highest after 417mm (16.4 inches) of precipitation recorded in September 1944 and the second-highest in 121 years,” reported local news media. This record rainfall cleared up the city’s infamous air pollution, allowing citizens to breathe the cleanest September air in four years.

Further, a wintertime La Niña — a unique ocean circulation pattern with a large-scale cooling of the Pacific’s surface temperatures — is expected to cool temperatures in India. Delhi experienced extremely low temperatures during the peak La Niña conditions in 2020.

So, while the mainstream media and politicians fanned fears of catastrophic warming of the Earth to advance tyrannical agendas, ordinary people in parts of India prayed for warmth and sun this year. Similar prayers also will happen in Japan and parts of the U.S., where below normal winter temperatures are predicted.

The 2021 weather does not prove the absence of man-made global warming, but it certainly reveals again the failures of those predicting extreme warming and their remarkable irrelevancy when it comes to regional conditions.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License

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