With temperatures rising in the country, the heatwaves arrived in February and warm nights too have been recorded far earlier than in the last few years.
On February 25, 2025, Goa and Maharashtra recorded India’s first heatwave of the year, marking the first time a heatwave has occurred during winter season (January–February) as defined by the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
IMD also confirmed that February 2025 was the hottest February in 125 years.
Data from Down to Earth (DTE)’s interactive atlas on extreme weather events highlights that Odisha and Jharkhand experienced their earliest heatwaves in four years.
The intensity of these heatwaves is also on the rise. On March 15, 2025, Odisha’s Boudh recorded the highest temperature in India. The extreme heat persisted, with Boudh reaching 43.6°C on March 16, followed by Jharsuguda (42°C) and Bolangir (41.7°C). Odisha thus had the three hottest locations in the country on that day.
Since 2022, DTE has been regularly tracking and analysing the data on extreme weather events put out by the IMD in the public domain. In 2024, for the first time, IMD released data on days with warm night and severe warm night conditions in its daily press releases.
Now in 2025, for the first time IMD in its press release during the month of February, included data on ‘night temperature above normal’ indicating the rising night temperature.
Between February 11 and 23, 2025, 31 states and union territories (UTs) recorded night temperatures at least 1°C above normal at least once. Of these, 22 states/UTs reported night temperatures 3°C to 5°C above normal.
Ten states/UTs, including Odisha in the Central region, recorded night temperatures exceeding 5.1°C above normal. In Odisha, on two days – February 12 and February 20, 2025), the night temperature was 5.1°C above normal.
Two states/UTs in Northwest including Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir, the Himalayan state) recorded night temperatures that were markedly above normal (5.1°C or more) as per the IMD.
The trend persisted, and on March 15, Odisha and Jharkhand recorded the first warm night conditions of the year — significantly earlier than in 2024, when Gujarat and Maharashtra saw their first warm nights on March 27. In 2024, Odisha and Jharkhand had their first warm nights much later — on April 5 and May 29, respectively.
Sanjeev Dwivedi, a scientist working with IMD confirmed in a media report that Odisha’s Baripada, Sambalpur, Sundargarh, Kalahandi, Balangir, and Chitragarh recorded warm nights on March 15, 2025.
The number of warm nights with minimum temperature — equivalent to night-time temperature — has increased critically throughout India over the last decade due to rising climatic impacts according to a global study released last year.
Now, in 2025 the advancing timeline of heatwaves and warm nights underscores a troubling trend of escalating extreme heat, consistent with findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. Since 2022, DTE has been tracking IMD’s extreme weather data, revealing earlier, more frequent, and more intense heatwaves and warm nights — pointing to worsening heat stress and climate-related challenges.
Scientists warn that prolonged exposure to high temperatures — both day and night — can exacerbate heat stress, increase mortality rates and reduce agricultural productivity.
Extreme heat during the day, followed by unusually warm nights, may interrupt the normal physiology of sleep and thus poses severe risks to human health as revealed a study published in Lancet.
A 1°C increase in night-time temperatures could reduce wheat yields by six per cent and rice yields by up to 10 per cent. Warmer nights can also impact quality, making rice chalky, less palatable and potentially altering its nutritional composition.