The old word is used to describe what most people think is the hottest part of summer before the rains every year, from late May to early June, when temperatures soar across North and Central India. This year, Nautapa is predicted to last from May 25 to June 2. During that time, several states will experience intense heatwaves, dry winds, and very high daytime temperatures.
This year’s timing is especially worrisome because Nautapa happens at the same time as the last few days of a strong “super El Nino” phase that has made temperatures around the world much warmer. El Nino is the warming of the surface waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean. This is a climate change event that changes weather trends all over the world and makes India’s summers hotter most of the time. Scientists say the recent event got a lot worse than usual because sea temperatures rose quickly in key Pacific areas. Some predictions say the anomalies will be more than 2.5°C above normal.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that unusually warm ocean waters and weaker trade winds helped make the conditions for an extremely strong El Niño event. This led to longer and worse heatwaves in some parts of Asia.
The size of India’s current heatwave can also be seen in the world’s temperature ranks. This week, the live global temperature rankings service AQI showed that there are a lot of Indian cities in the top 100 hottest places in the world. The hottest towns in the world as of May 22 were all in India: 97 of them, and only three were in Nepal. Cities in Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh were ranked high because temperatures in some areas went over 40°C.
Most of the time, Nautapa has the most severe effects in northern and central India, especially in states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi-NCR. Predictions say that temperatures will stay between 40°C and 46°C in some areas during this time. Northwest India is likely to have a few heatwave alerts as dry winds and strong solar heating continue until the monsoon comes.
