Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr | Winter’s Extreme Cold, Increasing Bad Air Problem for Much of India

It’s not an easy job to discern the connection of the vagaries of weather with climate change patterns. Heatwaves and cold waves, excessive and deficit rainfall patterns, extreme weather events of unusual rise in summer temperatures and sharp dip in winter temperatures evokes the big picture of a climate change crisis. The hard job is to collate the temperature highs and lows, rainfall percentages with climate change graphs with a consistent shift in climate. While headlines can easily connect cold waves with climate change, it is surely not an accurate description of the state of the weather.

Winter 2025-26 has witnessed unusually low temperatures not just in the North Indian hills and plains, but it was felt in the east and beyond the Vindhyas. Both Kolkata and Hyderabad are feeling the winter shivers, and so is a most unlikely place, the generally sultry Chennai on the Bay of Bengal. Some years ago, Mumbai on the Arabian Sea felt the chill in the winter months. It seems but natural that people should attribute it all to the deteriorating effects of climate change. But meteorologists have attributed this to the La Nina effect, which is part of the El Nino cycle. While El Nino indicated the warmer air currents over the Pacific Ocean, La Nina, at the other end of the cycle, has spelled acute winters. The vagary factor enters when it is noticed that not all La Nina years did not have acute winters. For example, 2023 and 2024 were La Nina years, but they spelt warm winters, unlike in 2025-26. The explanation offered for the irregularity in the El Nino-La La Nina cycle is due to the human-induced climate change pattern. It seems a common inference from the fact that we now live in the Anthropocene Age, when human domination of the earth is affecting every aspect of the planet.

While the high summer temperatures and the increasing number of extreme weather events – partly from very high temperatures, the erupting forest fires -- can be readily attributed to the rising carbon levels in the atmosphere, the falling winter temperatures compel one to pause. Whatever the climatic causes -- and there is no definitive explanation yet -- of acute winters as being felt across both North and South India, the impact of extreme cold can be readily seen. In North India, there is the issue of fog, which turns into the vitiating smog in cities like Delhi, where air pollution is intense and the air quality index (AQI) touches dangerous levels. This is a cause for public health concern. People are vulnerable to respiratory problems, especially older people and children. The health system struggles to cope with the increase in demand for services. It might seem that in regions which do not fall within the regular winter arc -- those nearer the Himalayan range and exposed to westerly disturbances -- feel the chill impact of uncharacteristic winter of the La Nina year.

Scientists have been consistently arguing that rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere caused by human activity, especially industrial processes and the use of fossil-based fuels -- coal and oil – to generate electricity and transportation in cars and trucks, is making habitable conditions more precarious than ever. Only the loony right in the United States, led by President Donald Trump, denies climate change staring in the face. But the quantification of climate change is a work that remains to be done. This is a statistical task which is crucial to work out the strategies to combat climate change. Floods, droughts, burning summers and freezing winters can be blamed on climate change, but the numbers will help trace the exact contours of the causality. The present calculation that the temperatures must remain within 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels is a good ballpoint mark, though the prediction is that if the present levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue, the temperatures may rise to 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. The struggle not to reach the no-return inflection point of 2 degrees Celsius is an emergency operation.

There is the short-term challenge of fighting the consequences of recurring La Nina winters, while working towards containing the long-term challenge of rise in global temperatures so that the winters do not vanish, icecaps and glaciers remain, and the cold winds continue to blow because the cycle of the seasons is what keeps food production going and the natural environment flourish. The disaster would be if the seasons get disrupted, and there is no respite from the summer heat, rain and winter cold.

In northern India’s cities and villages, most people do not have access to any kind of heating system. They have to fall back on wood and waste material to light fires. Cold wave deaths are still a harsh reality. While summer brings in its wake its own share of woes, winters a curse for the poor, and their numbers are much too large to pretend that there is no emergency. Neither governments nor the private sector have any strategy to build infrastructure to take care of cold in the few months of the year that covers large parts of the country. Buildings in India, whether residences or workplaces, are not always constructed keeping in mind the exigencies of weather. It is perhaps time to pay attention to this basic need. There has been much focus on how to deal with the summer heat, and partially with problems caused by rains, but none whatsoever to deal with the stress of cold in winter. Most habitations in earlier periods were dictated by the demands of weather. A look at the past can point to dealing with weather and climate-induced crises of the present and future.