{ "license": { "ours": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "terms": "/licence/", "note": "Notes, \"Where things stand\" and the record are CC BY 4.0. Excerpts and quotations belong to their owners." }, "no": 5, "slug": "india-heat-deaths-heatwaves", "title": "Nights that do not cool, deaths that go uncounted: India's heat", "nativeTitle": { "text": "रातें तपती हैं, मौतें गिनी नहीं जातीं", "lang": "hi" }, "nativePending": null, "summary": "India's nights are warming and humid heat is spreading, while official counts of heat deaths stay small beside every study of deaths above normal. Researchers, reporters and the state record who heat falls on, what it costs, and what protects people.", "standfirst": "A record of how India's heat is changing, by day and by night; how it kills and why the deaths go uncounted; the workers and households it falls on; and what heat action plans, insurance and disaster funds do, and fail to do.", "opened": "2026-10-01", "closed": null, "keptBy": "The editors", "url": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/", "whereThingsStand": { "revision": 1, "date": "2026-10-01", "changed": "The Long View opened with fifty-six entries on how India's heat is changing, how it kills, why the deaths go uncounted, the workers and households it falls on, and what has been done to protect people.", "body": "India is getting hotter in ways the midday thermometer does not show. Across the country the nights have warmed and humid heat has grown more common, and heat of this kind kills mostly by straining the heart, the kidneys and the lungs. Those deaths are usually written down as something else. India's official counts of heat deaths run from a few dozen to under two thousand a year, while studies that count every death above normal put the toll of a single very hot day in the thousands. The burden falls on people who cannot stop work or get somewhere cool: farm labourers, brick moulders, delivery riders, and families in rooms under tin roofs.\n\n\nThe weather office counts 2024 as [the warmest year since national records began in 1901](https://wmo.int/sites/default/files/2026-01/20260101_pr_4602.pdf#page=1), 0.65°C above the 1991–2020 average, and ten of the fifteen warmest years have come since 2011. A national average hides how the heat has changed. Measured over the whole country in a reanalysis of past weather, days that reach 40°C are about as common as they were in the 1950s, while nights that stay at or above 26°C and days of dangerous humid heat have multiplied, as the charts with that strand show. In northern India, irrigation and haze have kept winter days cooler than they would otherwise be, and researchers at Harvard warn that [the historical record understates the warming to come](https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/April-2026-Critical-Perspectives-on-Extreme-Heat-in-India_web.pdf#page=16) as groundwater runs down and the air is cleaned.\n\nCities have warmed fastest after dark. Satellite readings of 141 cities show their ground [warming at night about twice as fast as India as a whole](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00074-0), part of it the urban heat island, the heat that concrete and asphalt store by day and release at night. Humidity has risen too, and it matters because the body cools by sweating, which damp air slows. On a day when Mumbai's thermometer read 33.9°C, the air [felt like 46°C](https://scroll.in/article/1082029/rising-humidity-is-dangerous-and-its-making-indias-hot-summers-worse). The heat index captures that combination of temperature and humidity, as does the wet-bulb temperature physiologists use. India still declares a heatwave by daytime temperature, and [night temperatures are not a primary criterion](https://india.mongabay.com/2026/06/science-confirms-what-indians-experience-nights-are-now-warmer/).\n\n\nHow dangerous heat is in a place depends on more than its temperature: on humidity, on how many people live there, and on how old, poor or ill they are. An index built by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water puts [57 per cent of India's districts, home to 76 per cent of its people, at high or very high risk](https://www.ceew.in/sites/default/files/mapping-climate-risks-and-impacts-of-extreme-heatwave-disaster-in-indian-districts.pdf#page=11). The same council's earlier index of climate vulnerability, built around floods, droughts and cyclones, left heat out, and researchers have argued that the government's own index [understates heat's threat](https://journals.plos.org/climate/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000156&type=printable#page=1) in the same way. Among the largest cities, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Ahmedabad rank as [the riskiest for health](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772655X24000582).\n\n\nHeat stroke, when the body's temperature runs out of control, is only the visible edge of heat's toll. Most people who die in a heatwave die of [heart attacks and strokes brought on by the strain of keeping cool](https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/April-2026-Critical-Perspectives-on-Extreme-Heat-in-India_web.pdf#page=21), and deaths begin at temperatures well below the limits of survival. Even the famous limit, a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C, is set too high: young, healthy volunteers in a laboratory [could not hold their body temperature steady above about 31°C](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8799385/) in humid air.\n\nSo the way to see what heat does is to count all deaths and compare them with what is normal for the place and season, which researchers call excess deaths. When this was done for Ahmedabad's heatwave of May 2010, the city had [1,344 more deaths than in the same weeks of the years either side, a rise of 43%](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091831&type=printable#page=1). A study of ten cities over 2008 to 2019 put heatwave deaths at [about 1,116 a year in those cities alone](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11790314/), and researchers at Berkeley who carried its estimates to every district found that [one day of extreme heat brings about 3,400 extra deaths across India](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-health/articles/10.3389/fenvh.2026.1789071/pdf#page=1). These are estimates from models with wide margins, and they measure something different from the official counts.\n\nThe evidence has a complication. The first study of temperature and death to use deaths sampled from across India, covering 2001 to 2013, found that [moderately cold weather was linked to far more deaths than extreme heat](https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002619&type=printable#page=1). Its data end in 2013, before the heatwaves of 2015 and 2024, and its hottest band stops at a daily mean of 39.7°C, so it is no reason to think heat a minor killer. It does show how thin the national evidence still is. Some harms are barely measured at all. Women in Tamil Nadu doing heavy work in the heat miscarried at [more than twice the rate](https://www.downtoearth.org.in/health/occupational-heat-exposure-doubles-risk-of-miscarriages-or-stillbirths-95200) of women in jobs with rest, water and shade, 5% against 2%. A review of research on how heat harms mental health [found only four studies worldwide](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266727822500029X) that explain it.\n\n\nIndia keeps at least four official counts of heat deaths, and [they disagree](https://indiatogether.org/heat-deaths-count/). The crime records bureau counts deaths the police record as heat or sunstroke; the disaster authority counts deaths during declared heatwaves; the weather office counts by its own heatwave days; the health ministry tracks heat stroke that hospitals report. For 2024, police records came to [1,832 deaths](https://www.ncrb.gov.in/uploads/files/6ADSI-2024Chapter-1AccidentalDeaths.pdf#page=9), the health ministry [confirmed 161](https://heathealth.info/wp-content/uploads/Report-of-Heat-Related-Activities-2024_NPCCHH-compressed.pdf#page=15), and a count of news reports [found 733](https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/seeing-red-india-had-over-700-heat-deaths-in-2024-much-higher-than-official-toll-claim-scientists). For 2025, when May was cooler than normal, the weather office put heatwave deaths at [approximately 35](https://wmo.int/sites/default/files/2026-01/20260101_pr_4602.pdf#page=6). Over 2009 to 2022 the government's own series [differ by thousands of deaths](https://factly.in/data-huge-discrepancies-in-data-on-heat-wave-related-deaths-reported-by-various-agencies-like-ndma-moes-ncrb/).\n\nThe counts are small because a heat death is hard to certify. Under the national guidelines, a body temperature above 40.6°C at collapse marks heat stroke, but in rural areas the temperature may have fallen by the time the person reaches a big hospital, and [many doctors consider it safer not to certify heat at all](https://scroll.in/article/1069409/why-doctors-are-struggling-to-certify-heat-deaths-even-in-this-brutal-summer); some write heart attack instead. On one night in May 2024, at 47°C, seventeen government employees on election duty in Mirzapur and Sonbhadra died, and [not one death had been confirmed as heat stroke](https://theprint.in/ground-reports/they-just-dropped-dead-up-home-guard-who-saw-3-colleagues-die-cant-forget-those-20-mins/2137075/) weeks later. Underneath lies the death register itself: India now [registers 97.2% of deaths but certifies the medical cause of only 22.0%](https://thisindianlife.today/articles/are-indias-heat-deaths-being-counted/), and in Bihar, Assam and Uttar Pradesh fewer than 6%, as the map with that strand shows. Where compensation hangs on certification, the count decides who is paid. Telangana's revenue department recorded [38 deaths from heatwave conditions between 2019 and 2024, while police records showed 560 from heat or sunstroke](https://www.thenewsminute.com/amp/story/telangana/how-many-died-from-heat-in-telangana-the-answer-depends-on-whos-counting).\n\n\nMuch of India's work is done outdoors or in sheds without cooling: in 2023-24, 46.1% of workers were in farming and 12.0% in construction, and most work informally, without a contract, paid leave or the right to stop. The International Labour Organization found India [the country most affected by heat stress at work in Asia and the Pacific](https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_711919.pdf#page=55), projecting the loss of 5.8% of working hours in 2030, the equivalent of 34 million full-time jobs. The Lancet Countdown estimates that heat [cost 247 billion hours of work in 2024](https://lancetcountdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/India_Lancet-Countdown_2025_Data-Sheet-2.pdf#page=1), two-thirds of them on farms, and the World Bank puts the cost across South Asia at [the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs a year](https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099072226125517919/pdf/P500527-52dcf4df-7abb-43bc-9997-15db1fca9153.pdf#page=12), with informal workers' earnings falling about 40% during a heatwave. Moving work to the cool of the morning helps, but [less with every degree of warming](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27328-y); at brick kilns in Uttar Pradesh, some families now mould bricks through the night, and many workers [sleep three or four hours](https://india.mongabay.com/2026/06/night-shifts-help-brick-kiln-workers-avoid-peak-heat-not-its-consequences/).\n\nWorking indoors is no refuge. A survey of informal workers in Agra, Ajmer and Delhi found those in garment and stone workshops [no better protected than those in the sun](https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2026-07/22750iied.pdf#page=10); outdoor workers lost about 24 working days a year to heat, and nearly one in five showed signs of kidney injury. Delivery riders in Delhi [wait for orders in the sun](https://thewire.in/labour/special-instant-delivery-companies-say-theyre-sheltering-workers-from-the-heat-reality-looks-different) outside the stores that send them. For women, heat cuts paid work but [not the unpaid work at home](https://www.isignal.in/earthcheckindia/how-extreme-heat-affects-indias-informal-women-workers-979259). Beyond a general duty on employers, the only numerical limit on heat at work that the ILO lists for India [applies to factory workrooms](https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/ILO_SafeDay24_Report_r10_0.pdf#page=30), under a law of 1948.\n\n\nRelief from heat has to be bought. Only about [8 percent of households have air conditioning](https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/06/india-heatwave-electricty-climate) by one recent estimate, and 4.9% did in the national survey of 2020–21. Air coolers, which cool by evaporation and so work only in dry air, were in nearly half the homes of Punjab and Haryana and almost none in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, where the heat is humid. Projections see air-conditioner ownership rising steeply by 2040 while [staying low among the poorest tenth](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26592-2). As cooling spreads, its share of India's peak electricity demand is projected to rise [from a tenth to nearly half by 2050](https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/0bb45525-277f-4c9c-8d0c-9c0cb5e7d525/The_Future_of_Cooling.pdf#page=13), and much of that demand lasts past sunset, when solar power has faded. In May 2026 demand crossed 270 gigawatts for the first time, and coal supplied more than three-quarters of the power at peak hours. Those with least go home to rooms that hold the day's heat into the night, and some are pushed further still. A Hijra woman whose earnings from blessing drivers at a traffic signal fell with the heat [now works at night](https://dialogue.earth/en/climate/for-indias-hijra-women-rising-heat-comes-with-dangerous-trade-offs/), out of the sun but in work that is unpredictable and often violent, and Dalit and Adivasi workers say [heat plans do not reach them](https://behanbox.com/2025/05/02/indias-heat-action-plans-are-missing-caste-income-vulnerabilities/).\n\n\nIndia's main answer has been the heat action plan, a city's or state's script for what each department does in a heatwave, beginning with Ahmedabad's in 2013 after the deaths of 2010. An early study suggests it helps: after the plan, Ahmedabad's deaths on the hottest days rose far less, by one estimate [about 1,190 deaths a year avoided](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6236972/), though one city over two years cannot prove the plan was the cause. But a review of 37 plans found most following a common template, [only two assessing who is vulnerable and only 11 saying where the money would come from](https://cprindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Heat-Report_Final_27March-23.pdf#page=2). Officials in nine cities reported water and changed working hours but [little of the slower work](https://www.sustainablefutures.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Is-India-Ready-for-a-Warming-World-How-Heat-Resilience-Measures-Are-Being-Implemented-for-11-Percent-of-Indias-Urban-Population-in-Some-of-Its-Most-At-Risk-Cities.pdf#page=3) of shade and green cover, and none had cooling for the most exposed workers. In Delhi, unions say [several of the plan's measures, such as midday breaks for builders, are not carried out](https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/04/25/good-measures-poor-implementation-no-legal-teeth-can-delhis-heat-action-plan-face-the-heat).\n\nIn Ahmedabad, a housing trust is [coating poor women's tin roofs with reflective paint, and some women hold small policies](https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/beyond-the-thermometer-ahmedabad-uses-cool-roofs-misting-bus-stops-heat-insurance-for-climate-resilience) that pay when the temperature crosses a set mark. That kind of parametric insurance works more like [hazard pay than protection](https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/April-2026-Critical-Perspectives-on-Extreme-Heat-in-India_web.pdf#page=33), because a worker cannot know in advance whether a day will qualify, and the Self Employed Women's Association's 2024 payout [replaced only 5–9% of the income lost](https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2026-07/22750iied.pdf#page=12). In August 2026 the government [added heatwaves to the list of notified natural calamities](https://sansad.in/getFile/lsapps/loksabhaquestions/annex/188/AU2541_Ql0SOe.pdf#page=2), opening the national and state disaster funds to relief for heat. Whether families are paid may turn on [a certified heat stroke and, in some cases, a declared heatwave](https://www.isignal.in/earthcheckindia/to-unlock-heatwave-disaster-funds-india-needs-to-fix-the-fineprint-984795), which brings the question back to the count.\n\nThe record does not yet show how many Indians die of heat each year. No official series counts deaths above normal by week and district, and until one does, every figure here is either a partial count or an estimate from a model. ॥" }, "entries": [ { "title": "Heat-Related Mortality in India: Excess All-Cause Mortality Associated with the 2010 Ahmedabad Heat Wave", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2014-03-14", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The first study to document how heat and death move together in an Indian city, using deaths from all causes rather than cause-specific records. Deaths in Ahmedabad in May 2010 ran far above the average for the same weeks of May 2009 and May 2011, and rose with the daily maximum temperature.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Gulrez Shah Azhar", "Dileep Mavalankar", "Amruta Nori-Sarma", "Ajit Rajiva", "Priya Dutta", "Anjali Jaiswal", "Perry Sheffield", "Kim Knowlton", "Jeremy J. Hess" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "PLOS ONE", "excerpt": "4,462 all-cause deaths occurred, comprising an excess of 1,344 all-cause deaths, an estimated 43.1% increase when compared to the reference period (3,118 deaths).", "url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091831&type=printable", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260728160358/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0091831&type=printable", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2014-heat-related-mortality-in-india", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Increasing probability of mortality during Indian heat waves", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2017-06-07", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A study of summer temperatures and heat deaths in India from 1960 to 2009. Its model finds that a rise of half a degree in average summer temperature goes with a 146% rise in the probability of a heatwave that kills more than a hundred people. Even moderate shifts in the average, it suggests, may bring large increases in heat deaths.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Omid Mazdiyasni", "Amir AghaKouchak", "Steven J. Davis", "Shahrbanou Madadgar", "Ali Mehran", "Elisa Ragno", "Mojtaba Sadegh", "Ashmita Sengupta", "Subimal Ghosh", "C. T. Dhanya", "Mohsen Niknejad" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Science Advances", "excerpt": "An increase of 0.5°C in summer mean temperatures increases the probability of mass heat-related mortality in India by 146%.", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5462497/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20250202234157/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5462497/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2017-increasing-probability-of-mortality-during", "specimen": false }, { "title": "The Future of Cooling: Opportunities for energy-efficient air conditioning", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2018-05-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The International Energy Agency’s study of the coming boom in air conditioning and what it will do to electricity systems. India is among the few countries driving the growth, and its share of peak electricity demand that goes to cooling is projected to rise from a tenth to almost half by 2050. Solar power does not match cooling demand that lasts after sunset, so efficient machines and clean power together decide how cleanly that demand is met.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Brian Dean", "John Dulac", "Trevor Morgan", "Uwe Remme" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "International Energy Agency", "excerpt": "The share of space cooling in peak electricity load is projected to rise sharply in many countries, with the biggest increases occurring in hot countries such as India, where the share jumps from just 10% today to 45% in 2050.", "url": "https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/0bb45525-277f-4c9c-8d0c-9c0cb5e7d525/The_Future_of_Cooling.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260929085838/https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/0bb45525-277f-4c9c-8d0c-9c0cb5e7d525/The_Future_of_Cooling.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2018-the-future-of-cooling-opportunities", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Mortality attributable to hot and cold ambient temperatures in India: a nationally representative case-crossover study", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2018-07-24", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The first study to estimate deaths from hot and cold days in India using deaths sampled from across the country rather than from a few cities. It uses the Million Death Study, in which trained surveyors ask families how a relative died, for medical deaths at all ages from 2001 to 2013. Its finding is a complication this record cannot skip: in those years moderately cold weather was linked to far more deaths than extreme heat.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Sze Hang Fu", "Antonio Gasparrini", "Peter S. Rodriguez", "Prabhat Jha" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "PLOS Medicine", "excerpt": "In 2015, 197,000 (121,000 to 259,000) deaths from stroke, IHD, and respiratory diseases at ages 30–69 years were attributable to moderately cold temperature, which was 12- and 42-fold higher than totals from extremely cold and extremely hot temperature, respectively.", "url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002619&type=printable", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260930055547/https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1002619&type=printable", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2018-mortality-attributable-to-hot-and", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Building Resilience to Climate Change: Pilot Evaluation of the Impact of India’s First Heat Action Plan on All-Cause Mortality", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2018-11-01", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "One of the first studies to test whether a heat action plan saves lives. Researchers compared deaths in Ahmedabad on hot days in 2007–2010 with those in 2014–2015, after the city’s plan was fully in place. At the highest temperatures the rise in deaths was much smaller after the plan, with the largest drop on the hottest days. It is one city, a short span and an association rather than proof, and the authors call it a pilot.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Jeremy J Hess", "Sathish LM", "Kim Knowlton", "Shubhayu Saha", "Priya Dutta", "Parthasarathi Ganguly", "Abhiyant Tiwari", "Anjali Jaiswal", "Perry Sheffield", "Jayanta Sarkar", "S C Bhan", "Amit Begda", "Tejas Shah", "Bhavin Solanki", "Dileep Mavalankar" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Journal of Environmental and Public Health", "excerpt": "An estimated 1,190 (95%CI 162–2,218) average annualized deaths were avoided in the post-HAP period.", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6236972/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260811133637/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6236972/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2018-building-resilience-to-climate-change", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Working on a warmer planet: The impact of heat stress on labour productivity and decent work", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2019-01-01", "datePrecision": "year", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The International Labour Organization’s estimate of how much work the world loses to heat stress, country by country, with projections for 2030. In Asia and the Pacific, India comes out as the most affected country, and most of its loss falls on agriculture, with construction losing more and more hours. The report converts lost hours into the equivalent of full-time jobs.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Tord Kjellstrom", "Nicolas Maître", "Catherine Saget", "Matthias Otto", "Tahmina Karimova" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "International Labour Organization", "excerpt": "The country most affected by heat stress is India, which lost 4.3 per cent of working hours in 1995 and is projected to lose 5.8 per cent of working hours in 2030. Moreover, because of its large population, India is in absolute terms expected to lose the equivalent of 34 million full-time jobs in 2030 as a result of heat stress.", "url": "https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_711919.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001161624/https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_711919.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2019-working-on-a-warmer-planet", "specimen": false }, { "title": "The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2020-05-08", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A global search of weather-station records for the most dangerous combinations of heat and humidity. It finds that such humid heat has more than doubled in frequency since 1979, and that a few coastal places have already touched the wet-bulb level long treated as the limit of survival. Eastern coastal India and northwestern India are among the hotspots it names.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Colin Raymond", "Tom Matthews", "Radley Horton" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Science Advances", "excerpt": "Other >31°C hotspots in the weather station record emerge through surveying the globally highest 99.9th TW percentiles: eastern coastal India, Pakistan and northwestern India, and the shores of the Red Sea, Gulf of California, and southern Gulf of Mexico", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7209987/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260918083610/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7209987/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2020-the-emergence-of-heat-and", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Mapping India’s Climate Vulnerability: A District Level Assessment", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2021-10-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "CEEW’s first district-level assessment of India’s vulnerability to extreme weather, measuring exposure, sensitivity and the capacity to cope with floods, droughts and cyclones. It is here for what it leaves out. The report mentions heatwaves as a slow-onset hazard but does not include heat in its index, though it argues that such an index can steer decisions and money.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Abinash Mohanty", "Shreya Wadhawan" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Council on Energy, Environment and Water", "excerpt": "CEEW estimates that over 75 per cent of Indian districts, including 95 per cent of coastal districts, are extreme event hotspots (Figure 1).", "url": "https://www.ceew.in/sites/default/files/ceew-study-on-climate-change-vulnerability-index-and-district-level-risk-assessment.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260812085221/https://www.ceew.in/sites/default/files/ceew-study-on-climate-change-vulnerability-index-and-district-level-risk-assessment.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2021-mapping-indias-climate-vulnerability-a", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Air-conditioning and the adaptation cooling deficit in emerging economies", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2021-11-09", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A projection of household air-conditioning in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico around 2040, built from household surveys combined with projected climate and incomes. Ownership in India rises steeply as incomes grow and summers warm, but stays low among the poorest. The authors call the gap between need and access an adaptation cooling deficit.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Filippo Pavanello", "Enrica De Cian", "Marinella Davide", "Malcolm Mistry", "Talita Cruz", "Paula Bezerra", "Dattakiran Jagu", "Sebastian Renner", "Roberto Schaeffer", "André F. P. Lucena" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Nature Communications", "excerpt": "In India, the average adoption rate across Indian states increases from 12% in 2012 to 49–69%, across SSPs and RCPs, in 2040", "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26592-2", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001162021/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26592-2?error=cookies_not_supported&code=0dd676d9-d495-4490-8348-5270bc8c9238", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2021-air-conditioning-and-the-adaptation", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Increased labor losses and decreased adaptation potential in a warmer world", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2021-12-14", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A global estimate of the hours of heavy outdoor work lost to heat, and of how much of that loss could be recovered by moving work to cooler hours. India loses more hours than any other country, given its large working population, its heat and the share who work in farming and construction. Moving work to the early morning helps less as the world warms, because those hours too grow unsafe for continuous work in much of the tropics.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Luke A. Parsons", "Drew Shindell", "Michelle Tigchelaar", "Yuqiang Zhang", "June T. Spector" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Nature Communications", "excerpt": "India showing the largest heat exposure impacts on heavy labor (>101 billion hours lost/year), despite its modest average per-capita labor losses (162 lost hours/person/year).", "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27328-y", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001161944/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27328-y?error=cookies_not_supported&code=b839a42e-2d40-42c0-955a-706632ec7363", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2021-increased-labor-losses-and-decreased", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Evaluating the 35°C wet-bulb temperature adaptability threshold for young, healthy subjects (PSU HEAT Project)", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2021-12-16", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A laboratory test of a well-publicised theoretical limit to human tolerance of heat, a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C. Young, healthy volunteers resting in a heat chamber could not hold their body temperature steady well below that: around 31°C in humid air, and lower still in hot, dry air. The authors conclude that no single threshold fits every climate.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Daniel J. Vecellio", "S. Tony Wolf", "Rachel M. Cottle", "W. Larry Kenney" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Journal of Applied Physiology", "excerpt": "Mean Twb,crit values were relatively constant across 36°C –40°C humid environments and averaged 30.55 ± 0.98°C but progressively decreased (higher deviation from 35°C) in hotter, dry ambient environments.", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8799385/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260720061841/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8799385/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2021-evaluating-the-35-c-wet", "specimen": false }, { "title": "How is India adapting to heatwaves? An assessment of heat action plans with insights for transformative climate action", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2023-03-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "By the authors’ account the first critical review of India’s heat action plans. They gathered 37 plans written by cities, districts and states between 2016 and 2022 and read them against what a plan needs to work. The plans propose a wide range of measures and mostly follow a common template. Nearly all are poor at identifying and targeting the most vulnerable, few say where the money will come from, and none states its legal authority.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Aditya Valiathan Pillai", "Tamanna Dalal" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Centre for Policy Research", "excerpt": "Most HAPs are not built for local context and have an oversimplified view of the hazard.", "url": "https://cprindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Heat-Report_Final_27March-23.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001161728/https://cprindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Heat-Report_Final_27March-23.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2023-how-is-india-adapting-to", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Lethal heatwaves are challenging India’s sustainable development", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2023-04-19", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Three researchers at Cambridge, Caltech and Yale argue that India’s reliance on its Climate Vulnerability Index may understate the impact of heatwaves. Setting a measure of humid heat for April 2022 beside the index, they found more than 90% of the country in the danger ranges, including much that the index rates as of low or moderate vulnerability.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Ramit Debnath", "Ronita Bardhan", "Michelle L. Bell" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "PLOS Climate", "excerpt": "An analytical evaluation of heat index (HI) with CVI shows that more than 90% of the country is at extremely cautious or dangerous levels of adversely impacting adaptive livelihood capacity, food grains yield, vector-borne disease spread and urban sustainability.", "url": "https://journals.plos.org/climate/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000156&type=printable", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260825220402/https://journals.plos.org/climate/article/file?type=printable&id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pclm.0000156", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2023-lethal-heatwaves-are-challenging-indias", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Report: Heat-Health Preparedness & Response Activities, National Programme on Climate Change & Human Health 2024", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-01-01", "datePrecision": "year", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A report of the National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health, under the health ministry, on its 2024 heat season: warnings, training for doctors, and surveillance of heat illness in public health centres and hospitals. It records tens of thousands of suspected heatstroke cases and 161 confirmed heatstroke deaths. The count should be read with its coverage: on average, only about half the facilities meant to report did so.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Purvi Patel" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "National Programme on Climate Change & Human Health", "excerpt": "In 2024, 48,156 Suspected Heatstroke Cases (SHC), 269 Suspected Heatstroke Deaths (SHD) and 161 Confirmed Heatstroke Deaths (CHD).", "url": "https://heathealth.info/wp-content/uploads/Report-of-Heat-Related-Activities-2024_NPCCHH-compressed.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260128170432/https://heathealth.info/wp-content/uploads/Report-of-Heat-Related-Activities-2024_NPCCHH-compressed.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-report-heat-health-preparedness-response", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Impact of heatwaves on all-cause mortality in India: A comprehensive multi-city study", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2024-01-26", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The largest study in India of how heatwaves and deaths move together in cities. Researchers matched daily deaths from all causes in ten cities, from Shimla to Chennai, with daily temperatures, over years between 2008 and 2019 that vary by city, about 3.6 million deaths in all. Two days in a row above a city’s 97th percentile temperature were linked to about 15% more deaths, and the toll came to about 1,116 deaths a year in these ten cities alone.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Jeroen de Bont", "Amruta Nori-Sarma", "Massimo Stafoggia", "Tirthankar Banerjee", "Vijendra Ingole", "Suganthi Jaganathan", "Siddhartha Mandal", "Ajit Rajiva", "Bhargav Krishna", "Itai Kloog", "Kevin Lane", "Rajesh K. Mall", "Abhiyant Tiwari", "Yaguang Wei", "Gregory A. Wellenius", "Dorairaj Prabhakaran", "Joel Schwartz", "Poornima Prabhakaran", "Petter Ljungman" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Environment International", "excerpt": "We estimated that around 1116 deaths annually (95 %CI, 861; 1361) were attributed to heatwaves.", "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11790314/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260608143533/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11790314/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-impact-of-heatwaves-on-all", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Occupational heat exposure doubles risk of miscarriages or stillbirths", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-03-22", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A report on a study by Chennai’s Sri Ramachandra Institute that followed 800 pregnant women in Tamil Nadu, half of them doing heavy work in the heat on farms, brick kilns, salt pans and building sites. Among women exposed to heat at work, 5% miscarried, against 2% of those in jobs with rest, water and shade. Stillbirth or early birth came to 6.1% against 2.6%, and low birth weight to 8.4% against 4.5%.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Seema Prasad" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Down To Earth", "excerpt": "They worked in the scorching heat from 6 am to 5 pm, lacking access to toilets and shade, carrying water bottles because access to safe drinking water at the site is mostly unavailable.", "url": "https://www.downtoearth.org.in/health/occupational-heat-exposure-doubles-risk-of-miscarriages-or-stillbirths-95200", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260316143508/https://www.downtoearth.org.in/health/occupational-heat-exposure-doubles-risk-of-miscarriages-or-stillbirths-95200", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-occupational-heat-exposure-doubles-risk", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-04-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The International Labour Organization’s survey of how climate change endangers workers, from heat to air pollution and disease, and of the laws countries use to protect them. On heat it counts the world’s exposed workers and the injuries and deaths heat causes at work. Its list of national rules, which it says is not exhaustive, records for India a general duty on employers to protect workers from excessive heat and a numerical limit for factory workrooms set in 1948.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "International Labour Organization" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "International Labour Organization", "excerpt": "At least 2.41 billion workers exposed annually to excessive heat. Every year, 22.85 million occupational injuries, 18,970 workrelated deaths, and 2.09 million DALYs attributable to excessive heat.", "url": "https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/ILO_SafeDay24_Report_r10_0.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20250807201520/https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/ILO_SafeDay24_Report_r10_0.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-ensuring-safety-and-health-at", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Data: Huge Discrepancies in Data on Heat Wave Related Deaths Reported by Various Agencies Like NDMA, MoES, NCRB", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-04-23", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Pavithra K M sets the government’s own heat-death series side by side and finds they do not agree. Between 2009 and 2022 the crime records bureau counted about 15,000 heat-stroke deaths, the disaster authority about 11,000 and the earth sciences ministry about 6,750. The bureau’s and the authority’s counts matched until 2013 and parted ways after; state by state, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab show the widest gaps.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Pavithra K M" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Factly", "excerpt": "Until 2013, the data produced by NCRB matches with the one published by NDMA. However, since 2014, the values reported by NCRB are very different from those reported by NDMA.", "url": "https://factly.in/data-huge-discrepancies-in-data-on-heat-wave-related-deaths-reported-by-various-agencies-like-ndma-moes-ncrb/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001162945/https://factly.in/data-huge-discrepancies-in-data-on-heat-wave-related-deaths-reported-by-various-agencies-like-ndma-moes-ncrb/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-data-huge-discrepancies-in-data", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Urbanization and regional climate change-linked warming of Indian cities", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2024-05-15", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Two researchers at IIT Bhubaneswar used satellite readings of the ground’s temperature at night for 141 Indian cities from 2003 to 2020. Nights in the cities warmed about twice as fast as across India as a whole, and they link about 38% of the cities’ warming to urban growth itself. The measure is the temperature of the land surface seen from space.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Soumya Satyakanta Sethi", "V. Vinoj" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Nature Cities", "excerpt": "Almost all the cities across India were seen to have a positive NLST trend, with an overall mean rate of 0.53 ± 0.19 °C per decade over this period.", "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00074-0", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20240529112518/https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00074-0", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-urbanization-and-regional-climate-change", "specimen": false }, { "title": "CSE study tracks heat wave; exposes dangerous trends in India’s biggest cities", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-05-24", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The Centre for Science and Environment studied air temperature, land surface temperature and humidity in six megacities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, in the summers from 2001 to April 2024. It finds heat stress rising even where the thermometer is not, because humidity has risen in every climate zone, and that the cities cool less at night than they used to, Kolkata excepted.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Centre for Science and Environment" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Centre for Science and Environment", "excerpt": "Cities are no longer cooling down at night", "url": "https://www.cseindia.org/cse-study-tracks-heat-wave-exposes-dangerous-trends-in-india-s-biggest-cities-12205", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-cse-study-tracks-heat-wave", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Killer heat’s shadow: India’s labourers on the frontlines, face boiling temperatures", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-05-30", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The first part of a Down To Earth series on work in the heat, which visited brick kilns, building sites, factories and homes in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat; this part is about outdoor workers. At a brick kiln in Faridabad the reporter measured 43°C in May, with a wet-bulb reading of 30°C. One moulder’s family had come there on a contractor’s advance against his labour, and a co-worker lost his wages for the days he was ill.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Shagun" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Down To Earth", "excerpt": "“My body feels like it is trapped in a heat island, soaked in sweat. I would choose any other job over this if given the choice,”", "url": "https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/killer-heats-shadow-indias-labourers-on-the-frontlines-face-boiling-temperatures", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260421064058/https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/killer-heats-shadow-indias-labourers-on-the-frontlines-face-boiling-temperatures", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-killer-heats-shadow-indias-labourers", "specimen": false }, { "title": "‘They just dropped dead’—UP home guard who saw 3 colleagues die can’t forget those 20 mins", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-06-19", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Soumya Pillai reports from Mirzapur, where on 31 May 2024, at 47°C, 17 government employees on election duty died overnight. Among them were home guards, police officers and cleaning staff, some of whom collapsed at work or after reaching home. The district hospital had one emergency doctor, no oral rehydration salts and too few thermometers. None of the deaths had been confirmed as heat stroke.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Soumya Pillai" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "ThePrint", "excerpt": "We don’t even have enough thermometers to check temperatures of patients with heat strokes. There is no ORS packet in stock for over a fortnight now. We cannot even offer patients cold water due to frequent electricity cuts,", "url": "https://theprint.in/ground-reports/they-just-dropped-dead-up-home-guard-who-saw-3-colleagues-die-cant-forget-those-20-mins/2137075/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20240620071832/https://theprint.in/ground-reports/they-just-dropped-dead-up-home-guard-who-saw-3-colleagues-die-cant-forget-those-20-mins/2137075/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-they-just-dropped-dead-up", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Why doctors are struggling to certify heat deaths even in this brutal summer", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-06-19", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Tabassum Barnagarwala follows the death of a schoolteacher in Bihar’s Jamui, who collapsed on duty in the 2024 heatwave, to explain why heat deaths go undercounted. Under the national guidelines, a body temperature above 40.6°C at collapse marks heat stroke, but in rural areas the temperature may have fallen by the time the person reaches a big hospital. The tests that could settle the cause are not readily available there, and many doctors consider it safer not to certify heat at all.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Tabassum Barnagarwala" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Scroll", "excerpt": "The verdict of a heat-related death would entitle Akhtar’s family to Rs 4 lakh ex-gratia, but Shamim said they have “little hope”. “Usually government doctors label such cases as heart attacks.”", "url": "https://scroll.in/article/1069409/why-doctors-are-struggling-to-certify-heat-deaths-even-in-this-brutal-summer", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260421124756/https://scroll.in/article/1069409/why-doctors-are-struggling-to-certify-heat-deaths-even-in-this-brutal-summer", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-why-doctors-are-struggling-to", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Seeing red: India had over 700 heat deaths in 2024, much higher than official toll, claim scientists", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2024-09-13", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A report on HeatWatch’s count of heatstroke deaths reported in the news in the summer of 2024, which came to roughly twice the health ministry’s figure. The article also reports that 33 polling officers reportedly died of heatstroke in Uttar Pradesh during the general election, and records nights of record warmth in Delhi and Rajasthan.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Nandita Banerji" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Down To Earth", "excerpt": "While the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reported 360 heatstroke deaths, the report identified a significantly higher toll of 733 deaths and over 40,000 heatstroke cases in 17 states.", "url": "https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/seeing-red-india-had-over-700-heat-deaths-in-2024-much-higher-than-official-toll-claim-scientists", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-seeing-red-india-had-over", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Evaluating heat health risk in Indian cities: Geospatial and socio-ecological analysis", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2024-12-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A ranking of heat risk to health in 37 Indian cities of more than a million people, built from satellite temperatures, humidity, wind, green cover and population density. Chennai and Mumbai rank highest, followed by Kolkata and Ahmedabad, and the authors link a lack of green space to greater vulnerability. The weights given to hazard, exposure and vulnerability are the authors’ own choice, drawn from earlier studies.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Kaushik Mandvikar", "Nirmal Kumar", "Hitesh Supe", "Deepak Singh", "Ankita Gupta", "Pankaj Kumar", "Gowhar Meraj", "Inam Danish Khan", "Asma Kouser", "Santosh Kumar Pandey", "Ram Avtar" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "World Development Sustainability", "excerpt": "Results indicate that cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad, each with populations exceeding 10 million, are deemed less livable due to their high HHRI (>0.50).", "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772655X24000582", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2024-evaluating-heat-health-risk-in", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Impacts of extreme heat on mental health: Systematic review and qualitative investigation of the underpinning mechanisms", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2025-03-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A review of the research on how heat harms mental health, joined to six focus groups with people who have lived with mental illness and with health workers. Of 241 studies the search found, only four, from China and the United States, met the bar for explaining how heat does its harm. The focus groups added fatigue, health anxiety, lost ways of coping and isolation. The groups were mostly in London, a limit the authors name.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Lea Baecker", "Udita Iyengar", "Maria Chiara Del Piccolo", "Andrea Mechelli" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "The Journal of Climate Change and Health", "excerpt": "There is a dearth of reliable data on the mechanisms underpinning the impacts of extreme heat on mental health.", "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266727822500029X", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-impacts-of-extreme-heat-on", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Is India Ready for a Warming World? How Heat Resilience Measures Are Being Implemented for 11% of India’s Urban Population in Some of Its Most At-Risk Cities", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-03-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The first systematic study, across several cities, of how India’s heat measures are carried out. The authors interviewed 88 officials in nine cities facing some of the sharpest rises in dangerous heat, from Ludhiana to Bengaluru. Every city reported emergency measures such as water and changed working hours. Long-term work such as shade and green cover was rare and poorly aimed, and household or workplace cooling for the most exposed was absent everywhere.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Aditya Valiathan Pillai", "Tamanna Dalal", "Ishan Kukreti", "Alexandra Kassinis", "Lucas Vargas Zeppetello", "Escandita Tewari", "Navroz K. Dubash" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Sustainable Futures Collaborative", "excerpt": "Inconsistent and weakly targeted long-term heat actions suggest that India will likely see heat waves with higher mortality levels more frequently in the coming years as short-term life-saving responses and communities’ adaptive capacities are overwhelmed by rising temperatures.", "url": "https://www.sustainablefutures.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Is-India-Ready-for-a-Warming-World-How-Heat-Resilience-Measures-Are-Being-Implemented-for-11-Percent-of-Indias-Urban-Population-in-Some-of-Its-Most-At-Risk-Cities.pdf", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-is-india-ready-for-a", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Lost in the heat: The critical miscalculation in India’s heatwave mortality data", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-04-10", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Two researchers at UC Berkeley’s India Energy and Climate Center argue that official counts suggest about 1,500 heat deaths a year. That is a tiny number beside the roughly 25,000 deaths from all causes in India each day. Carrying the ten-city study of heat and death to every district, they estimate about 3,400 extra deaths from one day of heatwave across India and about 30,000 from a five-day heatwave. If a summer brought five such heatwaves, they reckon, the toll would be at least 1.5 lakh. Their 2026 journal paper, also in this record, sets out the same estimate in full.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Ashok Gadgil", "Piyush Narang" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Down To Earth", "excerpt": "Public health experts note that physicians often record only the immediate medical cause on death certificates, without acknowledging the role of heat as the underlying trigger.", "url": "https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/lost-in-the-heat-the-critical-miscalculation-in-indias-heatwave-mortality-data", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260917125416/https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/lost-in-the-heat-the-critical-miscalculation-in-indias-heatwave-mortality-data", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-lost-in-the-heat-the", "specimen": false }, { "title": "‘Good measures, poor implementation, no legal teeth’: Can Delhi’s heat action plan face the heat?", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-04-25", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Drishti Choudhary checks Delhi’s heat action plan against what happens on the ground in four areas: buses, building sites, shelters for the homeless, and drinking water. The plan calls for shaded bus stops with water, a midday break for construction workers, cooling areas at work sites and shelters open all day in an alert. Union leaders say several of these are not carried out, and the plan lacks dedicated funding and a legal means of enforcement.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Drishti Choudhary" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Newslaundry", "excerpt": "While the HAP includes thoughtful provisions, experts say, poor implementation, the absence of legal backing, dedicated funding, and inter-departmental coordination render it ineffective.", "url": "https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/04/25/good-measures-poor-implementation-no-legal-teeth-can-delhis-heat-action-plan-face-the-heat", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260311200315/https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/04/25/good-measures-poor-implementation-no-legal-teeth-can-delhis-heat-action-plan-face-the-heat", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-good-measures-poor-implementation-no", "specimen": false }, { "title": "How Extreme Heat is Impacting India: Assessing District-level Heat Risk", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-05-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Researchers at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water built a heat risk index for 734 districts, combining four decades of temperature and humidity data with population and building density and with social and health vulnerability. Their headline is that 57 per cent of districts, home to 76 per cent of Indians, are at high or very high risk. The report’s sharper finding is about nights: across most districts, very warm nights have been rising faster than very hot days.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Shravan Prabhu", "Keerthana Anthikat Suresh", "Srishti Mandal", "Divyanshu Sharma", "Vishwas Chitale" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Council on Energy, Environment and Water", "excerpt": "However, in the last decade, the number of very warm nights has been rising faster than that of very hot days.", "url": "https://www.ceew.in/sites/default/files/mapping-climate-risks-and-impacts-of-extreme-heatwave-disaster-in-indian-districts.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260811125550/https://www.ceew.in/sites/default/files/mapping-climate-risks-and-impacts-of-extreme-heatwave-disaster-in-indian-districts.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-how-extreme-heat-is-impacting", "specimen": false }, { "title": "India’s Heat Action Plans Are Missing Caste, Income Vulnerabilities", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-05-02", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Saumya Kalia examines whom India’s heat action plans serve. Dalit and Adivasi workers, women in construction and domestic work, and waste pickers face heat at work and at home, and their ability to cope is limited by poverty and power. A recent study found far higher heat exposure at work for marginalised castes. Activists say the plans name vulnerable groups in general terms but have not reached them.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Saumya Kalia" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "BehanBox", "excerpt": "“Dalit and Adivasi communities cannot afford to stop working during a heatwave, and we are the ones dying in this heat. But what does a heat action plan offer to a Dalit woman working at a construction site with her child strapped to her back in 45-degree heat?”", "url": "https://behanbox.com/2025/05/02/indias-heat-action-plans-are-missing-caste-income-vulnerabilities/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260811133128/https://behanbox.com/2025/05/02/indias-heat-action-plans-are-missing-caste-income-vulnerabilities/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-indias-heat-action-plans-are", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Rising humidity is dangerous and it’s making India’s hot summers worse", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-05-08", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Tanvi Deshpande, writing for IndiaSpend, compares a humid 33.9°C day in Mumbai, which felt like 46°C, with a dry 46.8°C in Barmer, which felt like 43.6°C. Humidity across India rose by 0.79% a decade from 1969 to 2012, and research reports that above 32°C each 10% rise in relative humidity raises the body’s strain by 22%. Yet India declares a heatwave by the thermometer alone.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Tanvi Deshpande" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Scroll", "excerpt": "On April 30, Mumbai was not having an unusually hot day at 33.9 degrees celsius if we only go by the mercury. But with 69% humidity, the impact felt on the human body was as good as 46 degrees.", "url": "https://scroll.in/article/1082029/rising-humidity-is-dangerous-and-its-making-indias-hot-summers-worse", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260427035652/https://scroll.in/article/1082029/rising-humidity-is-dangerous-and-its-making-indias-hot-summers-worse", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-rising-humidity-is-dangerous-and", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Beyond the thermometer: Ahmedabad uses cool roofs, misting bus stops & heat insurance for climate resilience", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-06-16", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A report from Ahmedabad, where the heatwave of 2010 led the city to India’s first heat action plan, on how its low-income residents adapt now. In Odhav, women weave and sew under tin roofs that turn their homes into ovens. The Mahila Housing Trust is coating roofs with reflective white paint, and some women are insured under a scheme that pays automatically when the city’s temperature passes a threshold for two days running. More than a decade on, the reporters find, putting the plan into practice remains hard.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Dhruval Parekh", "Surangya Kaur" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Down To Earth", "excerpt": "“Even if I run the fan for 24 hours, we don’t feel any relief.”", "url": "https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/beyond-the-thermometer-ahmedabad-uses-cool-roofs-misting-bus-stops-heat-insurance-for-climate-resilience", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260311065712/https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/beyond-the-thermometer-ahmedabad-uses-cool-roofs-misting-bus-stops-heat-insurance-for-climate-resilience", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-beyond-the-thermometer-ahmedabad-uses", "specimen": false }, { "title": "India: Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, Data Sheet 2025", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-10-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The India page of the Lancet Countdown, which publishes yearly peer-reviewed assessments, using more than fifty indicators, of how climate change is affecting health. On heat it estimates how many heatwave days an average Indian lived through in 2024 and how many of those climate change added, and how many potential hours of work heat cost. Farming and construction carried most of the lost hours.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Lancet Countdown" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change", "excerpt": "For 2024, heat exposure resulted in a loss of 247 billion potential labour hours per year, a record high 419h per person, and 124% more than in 1990-1999. The agriculture sector accounted for 66%, and the construction sector accounted for 20% of losses in 2024.", "url": "https://lancetcountdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/India_Lancet-Countdown_2025_Data-Sheet-2.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001161513/https://lancetcountdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/India_Lancet-Countdown_2025_Data-Sheet-2.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-india-lancet-countdown-on-health", "specimen": false }, { "title": "The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: climate change action offers a lifeline", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2025-10-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The ninth report of the Lancet Countdown, which tracks with dozens of measures how climate change is affecting health around the world. Its global heat findings give context for India’s: heat deaths worldwide have risen by more than half since the 1990s, and the work lost to heat set a record in 2024. This is the authors’ accepted manuscript, which may differ from the version in The Lancet.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Marina Romanello" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "The Lancet", "excerpt": "a record-high 639 billion potential work hours were lost to heat exposure alone in 2024, 98% above the 1990–99 average, costing US$ 1.09 trillion or almost 1% of global GDP", "url": "https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/130009/1/FINAL_-_2025_Report_of_the_Lancet_Countdown.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260320154250/https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/130009/1/FINAL_-_2025_Report_of_the_Lancet_Countdown.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-the-2025-report-of-the", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2024, Chapter 1: Accidents in India", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2025-11-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The crime records bureau’s yearly count of accidental deaths, compiled from data that states and union territories provide. It records deaths from heat or sunstroke as one cause among the forces of nature. For 2024 it recorded 1,832 such deaths, nearly a quarter of all deaths from natural causes that year.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "National Crime Records Bureau" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India", "excerpt": "Out of 7,903 accidental deaths due to forces of nature, 35.7% deaths due to ‘Lightning’ (2,825 deaths), 23.2% deaths due to ‘Heat/Sun Stroke’ (1,832 deaths), 10.5% deaths due to ‘Exposure to cold’ (833 deaths) and 4.6% deaths due to ‘Flood’ (361 deaths) during the year 2024.", "url": "https://www.ncrb.gov.in/uploads/files/6ADSI-2024Chapter-1AccidentalDeaths.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001163314/https://www.ncrb.gov.in/uploads/files/6ADSI-2024Chapter-1AccidentalDeaths.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2025-accidental-deaths-suicides-in-india", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Statement on the Climate of India during 2025", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-01-01", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The weather office’s yearly account of India’s climate. It ranks 2025 the eighth-warmest year since national records began in 1901, after the record of 2024, and finds that ten of the fifteen warmest years have come in the past fifteen. It also lists the year’s deaths from extreme weather: about 35 from heatwaves, against over 1,370 from heavy rain, floods and landslides and over 1,310 from thunderstorms and lightning.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "India Meteorological Department" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Press release", "excerpt": "Heat waves in 2025 claimed approximately 35 lives across various parts of the country.", "url": "https://wmo.int/sites/default/files/2026-01/20260101_pr_4602.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001161445/https://wmo.int/sites/default/files/2026-01/20260101_pr_4602.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-statement-on-the-climate-of", "specimen": false }, { "title": "How Extreme Heat Affects India’s Informal Women Workers", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-02-09", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Jahnavi Dhana Sri sets out why heat costs women workers more. 92% of women in paid work are in informal jobs, on farms, building sites and at home, many paid by the piece or the day, with no paid leave and no cooling. When heat forces them to cut back on paid work, the cooking, cleaning and caring that fill the rest of the day do not shrink; their income does.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Jahnavi Dhana Sri" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "ISignal", "excerpt": "When heatwaves force women to cut back on paid work, their overall workload does not decline; income does.", "url": "https://www.isignal.in/earthcheckindia/how-extreme-heat-affects-indias-informal-women-workers-979259", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-how-extreme-heat-affects-indias", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Intensification and spatial shifts of heatwave hotspot across India under climate and ENSO influences with health risk assessment", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2026-03-09", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A study of where in India heatwaves strike, and how that has changed between 1981 and 2020. Average summer daytime highs rose by about a degree over the period, El Niño years pushed them higher still, and the area of the country that counts as a heatwave hotspot grew by about half. For 2011–2020 it finds the central plains, the southeastern coast, parts of western India and Gangetic West Bengal among the regions most at risk.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Shravani Banerjee", "B. Padmakumari", "M. V. Ramana" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Scientific Reports", "excerpt": "From 1981 to 2020, India’s average summer Tmax increased by 1.0 ± 0.12 °C, primarily driven by global warming, resulting in a higher frequency, duration, and extent of extreme HWs.", "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-38289-x", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260811125548/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-38289-x", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-intensification-and-spatial-shifts-of", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Critical Perspectives on Extreme Heat in India", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-04-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A white paper from a workshop Harvard’s Salata and Mittal institutes held in New Delhi with India’s environment ministry in March 2025. Climate scientists, physicians, labour organisers, architects and economists each take one question: how fast India is warming, how hot is too hot, and whether cool roofs, heat action plans, heat insurance and labour law can protect people. Its value is its scepticism. Most chapters find the popular remedy weaker than its reputation, and say what would have to change for it to work.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Satchit Balsari", "Kartikeya Bhatotia", "Mihir Bhatt", "Sharon Block", "Caroline O. Buckee", "Jorge Gastelumendi", "Peter Huybers", "Owen Gow", "Tarun Khanna", "Nitya Mohan Khemka", "Radhika Khosla", "Bhargav Krishna", "Robert D. Meade", "Rajesh Nayak", "Aditya Valiathan Pillai", "Rajan Rawal", "Lucas Vargas Zeppetello" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability", "excerpt": "Daily wage workers must decide whether to stop working on a given day before knowing whether the payout conditions will be met.", "url": "https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/April-2026-Critical-Perspectives-on-Extreme-Heat-in-India_web.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001155933/https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/April-2026-Critical-Perspectives-on-Extreme-Heat-in-India_web.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-critical-perspectives-on-extreme-heat", "specimen": false }, { "title": "To Unlock Heatwave Disaster Funds, India Needs To Fix The Fineprint", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-05-04", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Tanvi Deshpande explains what making heatwaves a national disaster would mean, written while the Finance Commission’s recommendation still awaited the government’s acceptance. It could unlock central money for states, allow immediate relief and help pay for heat action plans. But eligibility could hang on fragile records: a death certified as heat stroke and, in some cases, a heatwave declared by the weather office in that place on that day.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Tanvi Deshpande" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "ISignal", "excerpt": "If there is a heat stroke death but a ‘heatwave’ is not declared by the IMD in that region on that day, the victims may not get compensation.", "url": "https://www.isignal.in/earthcheckindia/to-unlock-heatwave-disaster-funds-india-needs-to-fix-the-fineprint-984795", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001162820/https://www.isignal.in/earthcheckindia/to-unlock-heatwave-disaster-funds-india-needs-to-fix-the-fineprint-984795", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-to-unlock-heatwave-disaster-funds", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Why Can’t India Get its Heatwave Mortality Data Right?", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-05-21", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Anoushka Rajesh explains how India’s three main heat-death counts are built. The crime records bureau works from police reports and needs no clinical confirmation. The disease control centre tracks deaths reported by hospitals, and so misses many who die elsewhere. The weather office’s count is bound to the heatwave days it declares. For 2015 to 2020 the three came to roughly 8,200, 3,800 and 3,400.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Anoushka Rajesh" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "The Quint", "excerpt": "“India doesn’t have a robust system of registration for deaths, not only for heat, but in general. The cause of death analysis is poor as well. Partly because a proper system has not been developed,”", "url": "https://www.thequint.com/climate-change/india-heatwave-heatstroke-deaths-mortality-data", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001163054/https://www.thequint.com/climate-change/india-heatwave-heatstroke-deaths-mortality-data", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-why-cant-india-get-its", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Estimating heatwave-induced excess mortality in India’s districts", "kind": "research", "kindLabel": "Research paper", "group": "Entry", "date": "2026-05-26", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, take the ten-city study of heat and death and stretch it to every district of India, matching each district to the study city with the most similar climate. Their answer is that one day of extreme heat brings about 3,400 extra deaths across the country, and a five-day heatwave nearly 30,000. These are modelled estimates, not counts, and the authors say plainly that they cannot be set beside official heat-death tallies.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Piyush Narang", "Ashok Gadgil" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Frontiers in Environmental Health", "excerpt": "We estimate that a single day of extreme heat causes approximately 3,400 excess deaths nationally; a five-day heatwave causes nearly 30,000.", "url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-health/articles/10.3389/fenvh.2026.1789071/pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260925064930/https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-health/articles/10.3389/fenvh.2026.1789071/pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-estimating-heatwave-induced-excess-mortality", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Instant Delivery Companies Say They’re Sheltering Workers From the Heat. Reality Looks Different", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-05-28", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Atul Ashok Howale signed up as a delivery rider with three quick-commerce companies in Delhi during the heatwave of May 2026. The companies described cooling vests for some riders, drinking water and coolers at rest areas, some still being installed. He found a rider eating lunch on his bike outside a store with no shade, warm water, and two orders in an hour that paid ₹44.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Atul Ashok Howale" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "The Wire", "excerpt": "With our total earnings at Rs 44, it made no sense to purchase even a bottle of water. However, the Swiggy outlet had no cool water for gig workers – its delivery ‘partners’.", "url": "https://thewire.in/labour/special-instant-delivery-companies-say-theyre-sheltering-workers-from-the-heat-reality-looks-different", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260528103435/https://thewire.in/labour/special-instant-delivery-companies-say-theyre-sheltering-workers-from-the-heat-reality-looks-different", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-instant-delivery-companies-say-theyre", "specimen": false }, { "title": "India’s Heatwave Is a Warning for the Future", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-06-02", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Kayly Ober, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, reads the 2026 heatwave as a stress test that India’s energy transition has not yet passed. Demand crossed 270 gigawatts for the first time on 21 May, coal supplied upward of three-quarters of power at peak hours, and solar output collapses after sunset just as evening cooling demand rises. She sets this beside the workers in heat-exposed sectors, and the fact that only 8 percent of households have air conditioning.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Kayly Ober" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Emissary", "excerpt": "But solar generation peaks in the afternoon and collapses after sunset—precisely when accumulated heat drives a second wave of air conditioning use. The gap between solar’s output and evening demand must be filled by something—and without adequate battery storage, that something remains coal and gas.", "url": "https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/06/india-heatwave-electricty-climate", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-indias-heatwave-is-a-warning", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Are India’s big cities getting hotter?", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-06-04", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A city-by-city reading of the ERA5 reanalysis for 38 Indian cities from 1940 to 2025. Average temperatures have risen in almost all of them, but the count of very hot afternoons rises in some cities and falls in others. What climbs nearly everywhere is the heat the body cannot escape: nights that stay above 28°C, and days that feel like 40°C once humidity is counted. Chennai, it finds, now has roughly twice as many hot nights a year as in the 1940s.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Bhuvanesh" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "This Indian Life", "excerpt": "The nights are different. This chart counts nights when the temperature never drops below 28°C, when the body gets no overnight break to recover. Unlike very hot days, hot nights are rising in almost every city.", "url": "https://thisindianlife.today/articles/are-indias-big-cities-getting-hotter/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001155840/https://thisindianlife.today/articles/are-indias-big-cities-getting-hotter/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-are-indias-big-cities-getting", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Are India’s heat deaths being counted?", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-06-04", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A data story that sets India’s different counts of heat deaths side by side and asks why they disagree. It finds part of the answer in the death register. India now registers nearly every death, but in 2023 the cause of only about one in five registered deaths was medically certified. A death that heat helped bring on is unlikely to be labelled a heat death if its cause is never certified.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Bhuvanesh" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "This Indian Life", "excerpt": "Heat often kills by tipping weak hearts, kidneys and lungs over the edge. If the cause is never medically certified, it will not become a heat death in the official count.", "url": "https://thisindianlife.today/articles/are-indias-heat-deaths-being-counted/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001155819/https://thisindianlife.today/articles/are-indias-heat-deaths-being-counted/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-are-indias-heat-deaths-being", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Science confirms what Indians experience: nights are now warmer", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-06-04", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Mahima Jain reports on India’s warming nights. In 2025 the national minimum temperature sat further above its average than the maximum, and cities are warming at night nearly twice as fast as the country. Warm nights, humid ones above all, deny the body its nightly cooling. Night temperatures are not a primary criterion when India declares a heatwave, and most heat action plans are built around daytime highs.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Mahima Jain" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Mongabay India", "excerpt": "Currently, India doesn’t have a policy for tackling warm nights nor are they included in the definition of heatwaves.", "url": "https://india.mongabay.com/2026/06/science-confirms-what-indians-experience-nights-are-now-warmer/", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-science-confirms-what-indians-experience", "specimen": false }, { "title": "How many died from heat in Telangana? The answer depends on who’s counting", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-06-07", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A report from Telangana, where an eligible family can now receive ₹4 lakh for a confirmed heat death. A Telugu daily reported 51 heatstroke deaths on a single day in May 2026; the state had confirmed eight for the season. Over 2019 to 2024 the state’s revenue department recorded 38 deaths from heatwave conditions, while the crime records bureau recorded 560 deaths from heat or sunstroke, because the two use different tests.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Jahnavi", "Bharathy Singaravel" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "The News Minute", "excerpt": "“A death that is real to the family, also visible in the media, and medically plausible may still be absent from compensation records.", "url": "https://www.thenewsminute.com/amp/story/telangana/how-many-died-from-heat-in-telangana-the-answer-depends-on-whos-counting", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001163136/https://www.thenewsminute.com/amp/story/telangana/how-many-died-from-heat-in-telangana-the-answer-depends-on-whos-counting", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-how-many-died-from-heat", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Night shifts help brick kiln workers avoid peak heat, not its consequences", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-06-26", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Shivam Bhardwaj reports from brick kilns in Bareilly, Rampur and Amroha, where some families now mould bricks from around midnight to escape the day’s heat. One couple are paid ₹400 for every thousand bricks, and say fewer bricks mean less income. The wife says their tin-roofed shelter bakes by day, making sleep impossible. Many workers sleep three or four hours a day in peak summer.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Shivam Bhardwaj" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Mongabay India", "excerpt": "“Fewer bricks mean less income. We can either think about getting enough sleep or feeding our families; we cannot do both.”", "url": "https://india.mongabay.com/2026/06/night-shifts-help-brick-kiln-workers-avoid-peak-heat-not-its-consequences/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260723094306/https://india.mongabay.com/2026/06/night-shifts-help-brick-kiln-workers-avoid-peak-heat-not-its-consequences/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-night-shifts-help-brick-kiln", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Too hot to work, too poor to rest: health and economic impacts of heat stress on informal workers in urban India", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-07-01", "datePrecision": "month", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A survey of 538 households of informal workers in Agra, Ajmer and Delhi, most of them migrants on construction sites, brick kilns and roads, or in garment, food and stone workshops. It follows heat through their days and nights: the work, the homes that release the day’s heat through the night, the illness, the lost wages and the debts. Its central finding is that workers indoors, in enclosed and poorly ventilated workshops, are no better protected than those in the sun.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Ritu Bharadwaj", "N Karthikeyan", "Raashee Abhilashi", "Archana Shukla Mukherjee", "Vandana Khurana", "Harita Yadav Saha", "Rijo George" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "IIED", "excerpt": "A large part of the loss occurs even when workers stay at work, so assessments that count only absence understate the true impact of heat.", "url": "https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2026-07/22750iied.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260915033239/https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2026-07/22750iied.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-too-hot-to-work-too", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Heatwaves push ozone pollution to dangerous levels across India", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-07-28", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "A short report on a study from IIT Kharagpur of twenty years of temperature and ozone data, covering 188 heatwaves. Heat speeds up the chemistry that turns exhaust and smoke into ground-level ozone, so heatwaves bring a second hazard that lingers for days after they end. The study estimates that ozone during the 2024 heatwaves was linked to about 26,500 deaths from heart and lung disease.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Nature India" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Nature India", "excerpt": "Intense heat speeds up the photochemical reactions that convert vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions, and biomass-burning byproducts into ozone.", "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-026-00141-6", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001162711/https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-026-00141-6?error=cookies_not_supported&code=288a4722-7b8b-498b-950d-21ea6bd50a06", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-heatwaves-push-ozone-pollution-to", "specimen": false }, { "title": "A Livable Future: Protecting Jobs and Growth from Extreme Heat in South Asia’s Cities", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-07-29", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The World Bank’s study of what extreme heat does to work and growth in the cities of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It sets out what governments can do through the institutions and budgets they already have. It treats heat as a jobs problem: one that cuts the output of people already working and discourages the investment that would create new work. It proposes fifteen measures, from early warnings and protection for outdoor workers to building codes, cooling standards and heat insurance.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "World Bank" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "World Bank", "excerpt": "Heat deaths tend to be recorded as cardiac or renal failure, so they rarely reach the statistics governments act on; excess-mortality analysis associates a single five-day heatwave in India with roughly 30,000 deaths.", "url": "https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099072226125517919/pdf/P500527-52dcf4df-7abb-43bc-9997-15db1fca9153.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261002032117/https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099072226125517919/pdf/P500527-52dcf4df-7abb-43bc-9997-15db1fca9153.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-a-livable-future-protecting-jobs", "specimen": false }, { "title": "Declaring heatwaves as a natural disaster: Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2541", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-08-04", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "The Home Ministry’s answer in Parliament that heatwaves are now a notified natural calamity. Following the Sixteenth Finance Commission, heatwaves and lightning were added to the list of calamities for which the national and state disaster response funds pay relief, for 2026 to 2031. The answer also gives the health ministry’s count of heatstroke cases and confirmed deaths in 2026, as of 26 July.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Ministry of Home Affairs" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Lok Sabha", "excerpt": "Based on these recommendations, the Ministry of Home Affairs has included heatwaves and lightning in the list of notified natural calamities under the Operational Guidelines for Administration of the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) for the award", "url": "https://sansad.in/getFile/lsapps/loksabhaquestions/annex/188/AU2541_Ql0SOe.pdf", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001162804/https://sansad.in/getFile/lsapps/loksabhaquestions/annex/188/AU2541_Ql0SOe.pdf", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-declaring-heatwaves-as-a-natural", "specimen": false }, { "title": "How many Indians die of heat? Depends on who you ask", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-09-23", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Rakesh Dubbudu, writing from the team at the data journalism site Factly, explains why at least four central agencies keep separate tallies of heat deaths and why they disagree. The National Crime Records Bureau counts what police records say, the disaster authority counts deaths tied to a declared heatwave, the weather office counts by heatwave days, and the health ministry tracks suspected heat stroke flagged by district hospitals. Between 2000 and 2020 the crime bureau counted over 20,600 heatstroke deaths, the disaster authority about 17,700 and the weather office about 10,500.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Rakesh Dubbudu" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "India Together", "excerpt": "A labourer who collapses in a 44°C field in mid-May may be in all four, in some, or in none.", "url": "https://indiatogether.org/heat-deaths-count/", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20261001155908/https://indiatogether.org/heat-deaths-count/", "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-how-many-indians-die-of", "specimen": false }, { "title": "For India’s Hijra women, rising heat comes with dangerous trade-offs", "kind": "report", "kindLabel": "Reporting", "group": "Reporting", "date": "2026-09-25", "datePrecision": "day", "added": "2026-10-01", "note": "Dialogue Earth spoke to 26 Hijra women, a community of transgender and intersex people, in Delhi, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Chennai. Shut out of most jobs, many depend on blessing drivers at traffic signals, one of the community’s most visible sources of income, standing for hours in the sun in heavy saris. One woman whose earnings at the signal fell with the heat now does sex work at night, which spares her the day’s heat but is unpredictable and often violent. Another says the heat has grown harder to bear since she began hormone therapy.", "citation": null, "held": null, "figure": null, "authors": [ "Anuj Behal" ], "photographers": [], "publication": "Dialogue Earth", "excerpt": "“There are days when my blood pressure drops and I feel like I’m going to collapse,” she says. “But if I don’t stand at the [traffic] signal, I don’t earn.”", "url": "https://dialogue.earth/en/climate/for-indias-hijra-women-rising-heat-comes-with-dangerous-trade-offs/", "archiveUrl": null, "anchor": "/long-view/5-india-heat-deaths-heatwaves/#e-2026-for-indias-hijra-women-rising", "specimen": false } ], "related": [ 3 ] }