2022 fifth warmest year for India since 1901: IMD

New Delhi, Jan 6 (PTI) The year 2022 was the fifth warmest for India since 1901 when India Meteorological Department started keeping weather records.

The annual mean land surface air temperature was 0.51 degrees Celsius above the long-term average which is the mean temperature for the 1981-2010 period, the weather office said in the statement on Climate of India during 2022.

However, this was lower than the highest warming observed in India in 2016 when the average temperature was 0.71 degrees Celsius.

The all-India mean temperatures during the 2022 winter season — January to February — were normal with an anomaly of -0.04 degrees Celsius.

Temperatures during the pre-monsoon months (March to May) were above normal with an anomaly of 1.06 degrees Celsius.

Rainfall over the country in 2022 as a whole was 108 per cent of its Long Period Average value based on the period 1971-2020. The previous year also witnessed 15 cyclonic disturbances — three cyclonic storms and 12 depressions — formed over the north Indian Ocean against the normal of 11.2 based on data of 1965-2021.

In addition to these, extreme weather events like extremely heavy rainfall, floods, landslide, lightning, thunderstorm, and droughts were also experienced in various parts of the country, the weather office said.