Shifting climate zones across India (October 2026)
With the go-ahead of Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General of Meteorology and a co-author, we took up a study published in MAUSAM, IMD’s peer-reviewed journal, by scientists at IMD and IITM Pune. It redrew India’s climate map over seven decades and found the north turning drier and the peninsula wetter, with the hot, dry zone spreading from western into eastern Uttar Pradesh. We wrote a national note and regional notes for northwest India, Maharashtra and the west coast, the North-East and Gangetic West Bengal, the peninsula and Kerala. They replaced classification terms with plain descriptions of each climate zone and set the long-term findings alongside this year’s monsoon as context. The authors and the Director General’s office approved every note and quote before release.
The outreach produced 96 stories across 6 languages and 15 states and union territories, 43 in print and 53 online, for an estimated reach of around 45 million. High points included the Times of India’s front page across all editions, with its Kolkata edition also carrying the Bengal story on Page 1. The Hindu and Deccan Herald both did their own reporting on the paper, and PTI-Bhasha carried the Hindi copy. The Maharashtra and Goa note alone drew 17 newspapers, including a front page in Mumbai Choufer, and the Kerala note drew 17 Malayalam stories.
Supplementary read: full coverage report (96 placements, state-wise breakdowns, print screenshots)
SimplifyingScience Coverage Report - IMD Climate Zone Shift.pdf (8.9 MB)