At dusk on June 29, I noticed a middle-aged man sitting on the roof of his rickety single-storey house in a Srinagar suburb. As I walked past, I looked up and asked if the heat had driven him there. He smiled, nodded in agreement, and said: "[This heat] is nothing less than hell."
Inside the house, he said, the rooms trap so much heat that family members have a tough time staying there until it becomes somewhat tolerable late in the night. “It was never like this,” he went on to say.
Across Kashmir, thousands of families are telling a similar story as rising temperatures transform homes, livelihoods and routines in a region long associated with cool summers. People say experiencing weather extremes has become a norm in recent years.
While this year’s May and June months stayed comparatively cooler, temperatures have surged in the past five days with June 29 recording the temperature of 35.3 degrees Celsius, up by 1.5 degrees Celsius from the previous day, according to the meteorological department officials in Srinagar.
Last year’s summer was the hottest with July 5 recording the hottest day temperature in 70 years. The past few years have consistently recorded an increase in average temperatures. For example, in the summer of 2022, day temperatures often rose above 35˚C even as two years preceding that also showed abnormal summer temperatures on several days with August 13 in 2020 with a temperature of 37.7˚C recorded as the hottest in 39 years and July 18, 2021 hottest in eight years.
Srinagar experienced its second-highest maximum temperature ever recorded in September 2023 since 1891, when the local weather observatory was established in the region. This year, temperatures started rising above normal as early as in spring (late April), driving daytime temperatures in Srinagar consistently into the upper 20s and low 30s, significantly higher than normal for that part of the year.
A heatwave is declared for hilly regions when the maximum temperatures for a station reach 30 degrees Celsius or more. The average temperature in the Kashmir Valley is between 19.1°C to 27.6°C from April to mid-September.
Over the past few years, Srinagar has recorded unusually high spring and early summer temperatures, including a May heat spike last year that locals described as “unheard of” in living memory.
While some households suffer the heat, some are adapting to the changes largely attributed to the changing climate. For the past couple of years, 34-year-old Jameela Akhtar, a mother of two little kids in Srinagar city’s Bemina, has been urging her husband to do something about the heat radiated by the concrete slab of their house in summers. This year, the family has finally decided to insulate the roof using the services of a local company.
“Last year, we had put some thermocol sheets on the slab which gets unbearably hot after absorbing heat emitted by the tin roof during the day. But that didn’t help much,” said her husband, Mehran Ahmad. “So, we enquired around and found out that the roof can be properly insulated at a cost of around Rs 15,000,” Ahmad said and added that he is ready to spend this amount “as it is very difficult and unbearable to sleep in those rooms [under the slab] in summers.”
Ahmad’s is not the only family which had to look for a solution to the discomfort caused by rising heat in their home in summers, households in Srinagar and other parts of Kashmir are facing similar challenges. Obaidullah Wani, who runs a roof insulation business in Srinagar, said that the demand for roof insulation has increased by over 150 per cent in the past couple of years.
“As the word spreads around in neighbourhoods when some household opts for insulation and finds it useful, more and more families go for it,” Wani said adding that he started this business only seven years back as “there was no such concept existing earlier in Kashmir given the region’s comfortable climate.” Residents in Srinagar and other towns across the Kashmir valley say that hot summers have forced them to go for the adaptive measures such as insulating the tin roofs of their houses for preventing heat absorption in concrete slabs and installing air conditioners (ACs) in their homes.
Demand for air conditioners has also surged by more than 100 per cent in the past couple of years. “We were selling an average 20 ACs in summer some five-six years back. But in the last two-three years, we sold an average 220 in a year,” said a sales executive at a business unit in Srinagar. Families in Srinagar city and other towns across Kashmir who never needed more than a ceiling fan, are now also discussing about air conditioners while those who can afford are installing air-conditioners in their homes.
“The demand has increased massively. This may have also to do with increasing affordability, but families will only install an AC if they feel the need. It is as simple as that,” said Javid Ahmad who sells air conditioners in a Srinagar market.
The changing climate is also beginning to reshape the way people build their homes in Kashmir.
While reporting from Kupwara and Bandipora districts, I met several families who were in the middle of constructing new houses. Many said they had deliberately altered their building designs after experiencing increasingly hot summers over the past few years.
One of the most noticeable changes was the height of the rooms. Instead of the conventional ceiling height, several homeowners said they had raised the ground and first floors to around nine feet (or slightly more), hoping the extra space would reduce heat buildup indoors.
“We have increased the height of both floors to nine feet for a reason,” said Ghulam Nabi Bhat, a homeowner in Kupwara’s Tang Chek village who is building a new house. “The additional height makes the rooms feel comparatively cooler. This is what people in Kashmir now need to do when they construct a new house. The houses have to be made for the changing climate. Summers as well as winters are no longer the way they used to be in Kashmir,” Bhat observed.
In Bandipora, another homeowner said he had introduced a design modification after learning from a relative’s experience with excessive heat on the upper floor.
“My relative, who has built a new house 10 years before, told me that if the tin roof is fixed directly above the concrete slab (like it is in house), the slab absorbs heat throughout the day and radiates it into the rooms well into the night,” said Shams-u-Din Lone who has built a new house last year near Bandipora town. “So, I made sure there is a sufficient air gap between the concrete slab and the tin sheets. That air column acts like insulation and helps keep the upper floor more comfortable during hot nights,” Lone said.
Such adaptations, once uncommon in Kashmir’s traditionally cool climate, are becoming increasingly visible as residents respond to longer and more intense spells of summer heat. Builders in Srinagar, Budgam and Baramullah towns also told me that they are making some changes while designing the houses given the changing climate in Kashmir.
“If you take a look at the houses I have constructed in the past three-four years, I have left big spaces between tin roofs and concrete slabs, something I wasn’t doing earlier,” said Arif Ahmad, a builder in Srinagar. “This helps to keep the upper floors cooler and also makes a big space available in the attic (kaeni) allowing the houseowner to host large social gatherings, say during weddings or bereavements,” Ahmad explained.
Infrastructure in Kashmir’s towns and villages was never built for heat. The architecture, lifestyle and infrastructure in Kashmir always evolved around cold winters rather than hot summers. Non-winter temperatures in the past were hardly a challenge for the local population considering the comparatively tolerable temperatures and, more importantly, the region’s undisturbed natural landscapes such as water bodies and agricultural land.
Most homes lack insulation against heat. Air conditioners remain rare outside a small section of newer constructions though households which can afford installing air conditioners are now getting them installed.
Science is very clear about the temperature increase in the Kashmir region with some scientific studies reporting that summer temperatures in Kashmir on certain occasions have climbed by nearly 5°C in recent years.
The shift is not just about hotter days. Winters arrive as late as in February and March or bring too little snow. For example, Faizan Arif, an independent weather analyst in Srinagar, has analysed that the past seven winters – from 2019 to 2026 – recorded below-normal precipitation. The February of 2026 witnessed a deficit of 89 per cent by receiving 14.2 mm of precipitation against a normal of 130.4 mm, a phenomenon, experts say, which has become almost a regular feature for the past many years.
Besides the global climate pressures, official reports and experts also attribute the impacts to local stressors which include shrinking and degraded forests, disappearing water bodies, and unregulated urban growth. An audit report in 2026 by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India pointed to a steep and long-term decline in Kashmir’s water bodies, with significant implications for local climate resilience. Tracing changes against a 1967 baseline of 697 lakes, the report revealed that 315 lakes, once spread across 1,537 hectares in Jammu and Kashmir region, have disappeared entirely.
Beyond outright loss, many surviving lakes have contracted sharply according to the CAG report. As many as 203 water bodies have reduced in size, together losing 1,314 hectares. Overall, 518 lakes have recorded a cumulative shrinkage of 2,851 hectares which, the report underscores, has eroded ecological functions thereby diminishing the ecosystem services the lakes provide such as temperature regulation and water storage.
The loss of landscapes is not only limited to water bodies. According to the official statistics quoted in this newspaper report, Kashmir has lost nearly 34,000 hectares of cultivable farmland between 1996 and 2023, primarily driven by unplanned urbanisation, residential sprawl, and large-scale infrastructure projects.
Residents in Kashmir almost felt a complete lack of winter in the past couple of years with temperatures staying 10 degrees above normal. For a region long defined by its temperate climate, heat is no longer an aberration. It is becoming a norm.
Rising temperatures witnessed across Kashmir in consecutive winters and the lack of snowfall in winters prompted Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, early this year to urge for urgent climate adaptation measures such as artificial snowmaking, warning that rising temperatures threaten the Valley’s fledgling snow sports culture for which Kashmir’s ski resort, Gulmarg, is known for globally.
His remarks came when the ski resort of Gulmarg found itself grappling with unseasonal warmth with the hill station recording an unprecedented increase in temperatures that included over 10°C spike in normal temperatures in that season on some days. The lack of snow left Gulmarg’s ski slopes unusually bare for two consecutive winters for most part of the winter which dampened the mood of winter sports enthusiasts.
Now, the Jammu and Kashmir government’s tourism department has actually gone ahead and invited tenders for an artificial snow-making system in Gulmarg.
Despite massive changes in infrastructure which Kashmir has witnessed in recent years, planning and governance has mostly ignored the changing climate in the region. Public spaces, especially in Srinagar offer limited shade because of the changes brought in over the past few years in the region’s natural and built environment. For example, scores of trees which included several majestic chinar trees that existed in Srinagar city and other parts of the Valley till recent years, were felled for developmental projects such as roads, buildings and entertainment infrastructure. Similarly, newly created infrastructure in Srinagar city lacks enough spaces for providing shelter to people in hot summers, and there are no designated cooling centres.
Outdoor workers such as street vendors, construction labourers, traffic police and others who have no choice but to work in the open face prolonged heat exposure. “There is no system in place for rest breaks or shaded work zones… people just manage somehow,” said an observant shopkeeper, Mohammad Aslam, in Srinagar’s Batamaloo.
The government in one of its official documents has also openly admitted that Srinagar has become an urban heat island. According to this official document titled “Srinagar Heat Wave Action Plan 2024-25”, rapid urbanisation and changing land use on the suburbs coupled with the congested residential and commercial areas in the city make the Srinagar district a classic case of “Urban Heat Island Effect.” This, says the document, “enhances our vulnerability to abnormally higher temperatures, which when combined with the changing Macro-Climatic Scenario may lead to Heatwaves.”
The document claims that in order to prevent such instances in the long run, inter departmental interventions aimed at heat-reduction such as development of Green Spaces, induction of Electric Buses, prevention of illegal conversion of Abi and Nambal lands and encroachment on water bodies and urban forests are being implemented vigorously.
Yet, on the ground, the city’s preparedness tells a different story. Despite the policy commitments and official claims, adaptation remains patchy, leaving many residents to cope with rising temperatures on their own.
At least on three occasions this summer, while walking between Srinagar’s busy Jahangir Chowk and Hari Singh High Street, I noticed young women standing (or sitting) beside a parked security vehicle. It seemed an unusual place to wait for public transport. So, on one occasion, I walked over curiously before the reason became clear.
“This was the only shade one could find here,” said a woman using that shade, pointing to the shadow cast by the vehicle. With no trees, shelters or other respite from the blazing sun, the parked vehicle had become their only refuge as they waited for a bus home.
Such instances point to the fact that climate adaptation has yet to be meaningfully embedded in Srinagar’s urban planning. Tree cover has thinned in several parts of the city, wetlands continue to shrink under the pressure of encroachment, and there is no policy in place to help people design buildings with thermal comfort in mind.
The city’s recent makeover under the Srinagar Smart City project illustrates this disconnect. Over the past few years, roads, pavements and public spaces in commercial hubs such as Lal Chowk, Karan Nagar, Amira Kadal and Batamaloo have been extensively redeveloped, but with little provision for green spaces or shade. Throughout the construction phase, residents repeatedly questioned what they described as the city’s growing “concretisation,” arguing that the redesign overlooked the need to prepare for a warming climate.
As temperatures continue to climb, the question is no longer whether the city is warming, but whether its streets, buildings and public spaces are being redesigned quickly enough to keep its residents safe and comfortable.
Athar Parvaiz is a resident fellow at the Climate Change Media Hub, Asian College of Journalism.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth