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High-resolution spatiotemporal variability of heat wave impacts quantified by thermal indices

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Abstract

Heat waves are increasing in frequency and exhibit high spatial variability in their distribution over India. There are limited studies focused on thermal indices over India due to the nonavailability of high-resolution (HR) climate data. Here we develop dynamically downscaled HR (4 × 4 km) daily climate information for the months of April to June during 2001–2016 using a regional climate model called Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model, which are validated with station observations. The thermal comfort, heat stress, and its spatiotemporal variability and change over India are quantified in terms of indices like excessive heat factor (EHF), the heat index (HI), humidex, apparent temperature (AT), and wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT). The results show that there is an increasing trend in annual heat waves coverage (22,240 km2/year), annual frequency (0.07 days/year), and average intensity (0.04 °C/year) during 2001–2016. The spatial distribution of indices exhibits high spatial and temporal variability. The days with the severe threshold of indices are significantly increasing over north India at the rate of EHF (15.9%), HI (14.9%), humidex (15.9%), AT (13.4%), and WBGT (13.8%). The heat waves’ most vulnerable hotspots are on the parts of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and the coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. During heat waves, prolonged exposure under the sun will lead to adverse health impacts, and it is mostly observed over severe heat wave zone. These findings stress the need for developing suitable mitigation strategies for a sustainable ecosystem with minimum impact.

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Data Availability

The station observation data is collected from the Global summary Of the Day (GSOD), (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/gsod/-). NCEP FNL – Operational Global data is used for the boundary conditions of WRF model obtained from https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds083.1/

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

The author acknowledged the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India for financial support under the Women Scientist Scheme WOS – A (SR/WOS-A/EA-33/2018). We are thankful to the high-performance computing (HPC) facility of CSIR Fourth Paradigm Institute.

Funding

The study was supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), funding. under WOS – A (SR/WOS-A/EA-33/2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR Fourth Paradigm Institute (Formerly CSIR CMMACS), Bengaluru, India

    C. Neethu & K. V. Ramesh

  2. Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, Karnataka, India

    C. Neethu

  3. Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), CSIR 4PI, NAL Wind Tunnel Road, Bengaluru, 560037, India

    K. V. Ramesh

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  1. C. Neethu
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Contributions

Both authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. C Neethu has done the data collection, data analysis and interpretation, and the drafting of the article under the supervision of K V Ramesh. K V Ramesh reviewed and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to K. V. Ramesh.

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Neethu, C., Ramesh, K.V. High-resolution spatiotemporal variability of heat wave impacts quantified by thermal indices. Theor Appl Climatol 148, 1181–1198 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-03987-9

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