# How is climate change changing India? > Data on temperature, rainfall, sea level, extreme heat, and emissions paint a picture of a country already feeling the effects, while its per-person CO₂ remains far below that of rich nations. **India is getting hotter, its rain is swinging, and the air is often unsafe, but the country’s role in causing it is still small.** Since the 1940s, India’s average temperature has risen about 1.5°C. The sea has climbed 23 cm at Mumbai and 32 cm at Chennai. Warm, humid nights are more common in coastal cities. Meanwhile, India emits 2.2 tonnes of CO₂ per person, less than a sixth of the American figure. But with 145 crore people and 42% of workers still on farms, the exposure is enormous. This page walks through 28 charts that together show the signal, the cause, and the stakes. India’s climate is shifting in measurable ways. The national average temperature has climbed about 1.5°C since the 1940s. The rainfall that feeds farms and fills reservoirs is swinging more wildly. The Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal are creeping up the land. And the same fossil-fuel smoke that warms the planet chokes the air people breathe. But India’s part in the cause is small per person and historically tiny next to the countries that industrialised first. Here is what the numbers say, chart by chart. ## How much hotter has India actually become? The chart does not simply show the temperature. It shows the temperature anomaly, the gap between each year’s average and the 1991–2020 baseline. That is a careful way of saying: a value of 0.07°C in 2025 sounds tiny, but it is measured against a period that was already warmer than the mid-20th century. In 1940, the anomaly was –0.92°C. By 2024, it reached +0.57°C. That is a swing of roughly 1.5°C. And because this is a national average, it smooths out the spikes that a labourer in Nagpur or a family in a Delhi slum actually endures. The average is gentler than the reality. The real danger is in the hottest days, which are growing in number. ## What does a century of warming look like? Climate stripes transform the same anomaly numbers into a field of colour: blue for cooler-than-normal years, red for hotter. In the first half of the record, blue dominates. Then the stripes turn a persistent, deepening red. There are no axes, no labels, just the colour. The message is instant: the last few decades are unlike anything India’s instruments recorded before. The warming is not a theory. It is a colour that keeps getting stronger. ## Is each decade really hotter than the last? Averaging the anomalies into decades removes the year-to-year noise and reveals the staircase. The 1940s and 1950s were around 0.7°C below the 1991–2020 norm. The 1960s were still below, but less so. After the 1970s, the decades crossed into positive territory and kept climbing. The 2010s were around 0.3°C above the baseline. The single warmest years, 2016, 2017, 2018, all sit inside the two most recent decades. The data does not reverse; each decade has been warmer than the one before it. ## What is India’s actual average temperature, not just the change? Anomalies measure the change, but they do not tell you how hot it really is. The ERA5 dataset gives the land-only average temperature in degrees Celsius. In 1940, the average was 22.96°C. In 2024, it was 24.46°C. That is a rise of around 1.5°C, consistent with the anomaly shift, but expressed in absolute terms. Twenty-four degrees might sound pleasant, but this is an average across the whole country, from the Himalayas to the Thar Desert, and across all seasons. The figure hides the killing heat of May and June, just as it hides the frozen peaks. It is a single number that helps measure the overall system, not the local experience. ## Where is India’s temperature headed by 2100? Climate models project a range of futures depending on how much the world emits. The middle-of-the-road scenario (SSP2-4.5) takes India’s average from 24.67°C in 2015 to 26.64°C by 2100, a further rise of about 2°C. Under high emissions, it reaches 29.25°C. Even in the low-emissions vision, it climbs to 25.66°C. These are national averages. The extra 2°C to 5°C on the average means far more scorching days and nights in the cities where most Indians will live. The path is not fixed; it depends on the world’s collective choices, but the direction is clear. ## Why does humidity make the heat more dangerous? A hot day is worse when the air is thick with moisture, because the body cannot cool itself through sweat. India’s average relative humidity, computed from ERA5 reanalysis, has risen from 51.5% in 1940 to 64.2% in 2024. That is a significant shift for a national mean over a tropical landmass. It means the same 24°C average now feels heavier and more uncomfortable. In coastal cities, where humidity is naturally high, a seemingly moderate temperature can become lethal during a heatwave. Heat and humidity together is the real threat. ## Is India’s rainfall becoming more erratic? The annual precipitation total does not show a simple up or down trend. It swings. In 1940, the average was 1,211.8 mm. By 2025, it reached 1,404.4 mm. But look at the years in between: 1,110 mm in 2018, then 1,374.7 mm in 2019, then 1,315.4 mm in 2020. The monsoon is the beating heart of India’s farms and water supply, and the rainfall is growing noisier. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so when it rains, it often pours harder, even if the annual total looks similar. What matters for a kharif crop is not the year-end sum but the timing and intensity of the rainfall within the season. This chart shows the annual total to reveal that even the big-picture number is unsteady. ## What is the air quality like in India’s big cities right now? A live snapshot from the World Air Quality Index project: Mumbai’s AQI is 156 (unhealthy), Delhi’s is 95 (moderate), Chennai 73, Kolkata 65, Bengaluru 58. These numbers change hour by hour, but they capture a typical picture. The dominant pollutant is PM2.5, fine particles that enter the lungs and bloodstream. The same combustion that pumps out CO₂ also releases these particles. So the climate story and the air-quality story share a common root. ## How has air pollution changed over the years? The World Bank’s estimate of mean annual PM2.5 exposure for India was 62 µg/m³ in 1990. It fell to 48.4 µg/m³ by 2020. That is a drop, but 48 µg/m³ is still more than nine times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³. So the air has become marginally cleaner on average, likely due to cooking fuel transitions and some emission controls, but it remains dangerously polluted for millions. The long-term trend adds critical context to the daily AQI snapshot. ## Which cities are seeing more extremely hot days? The national average temperature rise does not translate into more extremely hot days in every city. Delhi’s count of days at or above 35°C fell from 144 in 1940 to 87 in 2025. Chennai’s dropped from 28 to 21. Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bengaluru rarely cross 35°C. But this single threshold does not capture the full danger, as the next chart explains. ## Are nights staying hot as well? Yes, warm nights are climbing. In Chennai, the number of warm nights has shot up from 22 in 1940 to 99 in 2025. Mumbai rose from 2 to 14. Delhi saw a decline from 49 to 37, but the data for northwestern cities can be noisy. Hot nights are a hidden killer: without a cool night, the body cannot recover, and the risk of heatstroke multiplies. The rise in humid nights, especially in coastal cities, is one of the clearest climate signals in India’s urban data. ## How much is the sea rising along India’s coasts? Tide gauges in Mumbai since 1878 and Chennai since 1916 show a steady upward march. At Mumbai, sea level has gone from –40 mm relative to the 1961–1990 average to +192 mm in 2024, a rise of 232 mm over 146 years. At Chennai, the rise is even steeper: from 2.5 mm in 1916 to 317.5 mm in 2022. These are not projections; they are instrument readings. A rising sea means more frequent coastal flooding, saltwater intrusion into groundwater, and higher storm surges during cyclones. ## How many lives do climate-linked disasters claim? The disaster deaths dataset, compiled by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, shows floods as the dominant killer in recent years. In 2025, floods took 405 lives, landslides 154, and storms 158, totalling 717. In 2024, extreme temperature deaths spiked to 733 alongside 285 flood and 388 landslide deaths. The numbers bounce around; a single large cyclone or heatwave can cause a spike. The long-term story is that floods and storms are the recurring threat, and as rainfall becomes heavier and seas rise, the odds of a deadly event tilt upward. ## How much CO2 does India now emit? India released 3.19 billion tonnes of CO₂ from fossil fuels and industry in 2024. That is a thousand times higher than the 3,94,481 tonnes emitted in 1858, the first year in the record. The climb has been steep since the 1990s as the economy grew. But total CO₂ tells only one side, because India also emits other warming gases. ## Is CO2 the whole story, or are other gases also rising? Greenhouse gases include methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O), not just CO₂. In 2024, India’s emissions included 3.09 billion tonnes of CO₂, 859 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent from methane, and 310 million from nitrous oxide. Methane comes largely from agriculture and waste. So the total greenhouse gas footprint was 4.26 billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent. CO₂ is the largest piece, but methane is a quarter of the warming effect. Ignoring it misses a chunk of the problem. ## Which sectors produce India’s greenhouse gases? In 2023, the largest emitting sector was electricity and heat, at 1.55 billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent. Agriculture followed with 808 million tonnes, then manufacturing and construction at 675 million, transport at 362 million, buildings at 240 million, and industry at 221 million. The pattern is different from rich countries: agriculture is the second-largest source, reflecting the large rural population and livestock. Land-use change and forestry actually subtracted 146 million tonnes, acting as a sink. This mix shapes which solutions can work. ## Is India’s economic growth becoming less polluting? Yes, the economy is growing slightly faster than emissions. In 1990, India produced $1.91 trillion in GDP (constant 2015 US$) and emitted 578 million tonnes of CO₂. By 2024, GDP reached $14.25 trillion and CO₂ emissions were 3.19 billion. That means the economy grew about 7.5 times while emissions grew 5.5 times. The carbon intensity of the economy, emissions per dollar of output, has fallen. So there is a relative decoupling, but not an absolute one yet. Emissions are still rising, just not as fast as GDP. ## Is each unit of electricity getting cleaner? The carbon intensity of India’s electricity, grams of CO₂ emitted per kilowatt-hour generated, has fallen from 740 in 2000 to 670 in 2025. That is a 9% drop over 25 years, driven by more renewables and improved coal plant efficiency. However, 670 g/kWh is still a fairly high number globally. The direction is right, but the pace needs to quicken if electricity is to stop driving up total emissions. ## How is India generating its electricity? In 2025, coal provided 70.8% of total generation (1,474 TWh out of 2,082 TWh). Clean sources, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, bioenergy, together supplied 26.7%. Solar alone generated 97 TWh, wind 74 TWh, hydro 178 TWh. Coal still rules, but the clean share has expanded from single digits two decades ago. The transition is visible in the lines: solar is the fastest-growing source, but demand is growing so quickly that even large clean additions have not shrunk coal’s share much. ## How fast are solar and wind capacity growing? Solar installed capacity jumped from a negligible 1.1 megawatts in 2000 to 97,384 megawatts (97.4 GW) in 2024. Wind rose from 941 MW to 48,163 MW over the same period. Total renewable capacity reached 204 GW. This is one of the world’s fastest energy build-outs, and it has happened mostly in the last ten years. Capacity is not generation, the sun does not always shine, but it shows the foundation being laid. ## Does coal still dominate? Yes. As a share of generation, coal stood at 70.8% in 2025. The clean share, including hydro and nuclear, reached 26.7%. The headline “clean energy surge” is true in absolute terms, but the grid still runs on coal. The tension between rising demand and the need to displace fossil fuels is the central energy challenge. ## How do India’s per-person emissions compare? In 2024, an average Indian emitted 2.2 tonnes of CO₂. A Chinese person emitted 8.7 tonnes. An American emitted 14.2 tonnes. The world average was 4.7 tonnes, and the European Union was at 5.4 tonnes. India’s per capita figure is among the lowest of large economies. This is the fairness number: climate change is a global problem, but Indians have contributed far less per person to the cause. ## How do India’s total emissions stack up globally? India’s 3.19 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2024 placed it third behind China (12.29 billion) and the United States (4.9 billion), and ahead of the EU (2.43 billion). So India is a significant emitter in absolute terms, but it is home to about 18% of the world’s population, so its share of global emissions (8.3%) is still lower than its population share. ## Who is responsible for the CO2 already in the air? Cumulative emissions since 1750 are the real measure of historical responsibility. The United States has emitted 435 billion tonnes, China 285 billion, the EU 301 billion. India’s cumulative total is 66 billion tonnes. The atmosphere cares about the stock, not the flow. The big numbers from the early industrialisers are the ones still trapping heat. ## How have per-person emissions grown over time? A comparison of trajectories since 1750 shows that India’s per capita emissions were near zero until the mid-20th century and have only recently crossed 2 tonnes. The US and UK, by contrast, were emitting over 10 tonnes per person by the early 1900s. China’s rose in the 2000s. The chart makes clear that India’s emissions growth is recent, and its per person figure is still below the world average. ## How much of the world’s CO2 does India emit? India’s share of global CO₂ emissions was 0.1% in 1858. It reached 8.3% in 2024. That is a steep climb in the last two decades, driven by coal-powered growth. But it is still well below India’s share of the global population. The world’s carbon budget is limited, so this share will be watched closely. ## Why is India so vulnerable: how many still farm? In 1991, 63.1% of India’s workforce was in agriculture; by 2025, that share had fallen to 41.6%. That is still over 40% of workers depending on the sky for their income. A failed monsoon, an unseasonal downpour, or a blistering spring heatwave can wipe out a year’s livelihood. The shift away from farming is slow, and while it continues, a huge number of people remain directly exposed to climate swings. ## How many people will live through this hotter century? India’s population has grown from 43.6 crore in 1960 to 145.1 crore in 2024. More people means more bodies to shield from heat, more mouths to feed from an uncertain harvest, and more homes in the path of storms and floods. The scale of exposure, measured in plain human numbers, is what makes every fraction of a degree of warming matter for India. --- The data shows a country already living with a changed climate: hotter, more humid, with wilder rain and rising seas. It also shows a country that is still a small part of the cause, per person and historically, but whose emissions are growing fast. The hardest truth is the number of people, 145 crore and counting, who face these shifts with livelihoods tied to the land. The numbers do not predict the future; they show what is already happening and what will likely get worse without a sharp turn in the world’s energy use. ## Sources - Temperature, precipitation, and emissions data from Our World in Data (OWID), based on sources like the Global Carbon Budget and ERA5. - AQI snapshots from the World Air Quality Index project (WAQI). - PM2.5 exposure from the World Bank. - Climate projections from the Climate Change Knowledge Portal (CCKP) of the World Bank, using CMIP6 models. - Electricity data from Ember and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). - Sea level data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL). - Disaster deaths from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) via OWID. - City-level heat days and nights from Open-Meteo using ERA5 reanalysis. --- Source: [This Indian Life](https://thisindianlife.today/articles/how-is-climate-change-changing-india/) · Updated 2026-06-02. Licensed CC BY 4.0. 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