Hot weather hazard analysis over India

Heat waves are often termed as the silent killer and have become even more important as recent studies suggest that the heat wave have become second most devastating extreme weather events in terms of human deaths and losses. It is also been largely realised by scientific community that it is not just the high temperatures which are responsible for the gruesome effect of heat waves but several other meteorological parameters play a vital role in aggravating the impact and causing much more damages. In view of the above the attention of scientific community, weather forecasters as well as disaster managers has shifted to also take into account the different meteorological parameters like maximum and minimum temperatures, relative humidity, wind speed, duration/spell of heat waves and its intensity which are aggravating the impact of heat stress. In this background, this study is undertaken as an attempt to quantify the effect of different meteorological parameters on heat wave on different regions of India for different summer months (March, April, May and June). In this study the impact of individual meteorological parameter as well their cumulative effect is studied based on data of 30 years (1981–2010) for 300 stations. The effect of different meteorological parameters is identified for different months for different regions of the country. Also the cumulative scores are calculated for different regions considering different meteorological parameters, as a first initiative to perform heat hazard analysis and zonation over the entire country. This could serve as initial step for planning mitigation and adaptation strategies throughout the country. These scores as thresholds for different regions may be also useful for operational forecaster’s for early impact based warning services as well as for the disaster managers, for taking effective and timely actions.