1,500 days and an alarm for new climate

Seasons are the compass that guide humans to survive and thrive as a society. What happens if seasons lose their distinct character and predictable rhythm? This is no longer a theoretical question. The Earth is entering a new climate regime, its atmosphere now saturated with greenhouse gases at levels without precedent in human history. And the earliest sign of this shift is the near-dissolution of familiar seasons; all merging and dissipating like the pupa inside the chrysalis, but, not to give birth to that mesmerising butterfly. This metamorphosis is manifest in the blizzard of weather events, extreme in severity and unseasonal by nature and geography.

Since 2022, the Centre for Science and Environment and Down To Earth (CSE-DTE) have tracked extreme weather in India to understand this meteorological upheaval. Every day, through September 30 this year, the team has scoured bulletins from the India Meteorological Department, the disaster management division of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, state agencies and newspapers nationwide. These nearly 1,500 days of monitoring (excluding October-December 2025), has created a new atlas of India's weather disasters. It reveals a weather / climate profile detached from traditional seasons and geographical tag of weather events.

For 1,227 days, India recorded at least one extreme weather event a day — cold spells, heatwaves, cloudburst, heavy rain, storms or floods. Events considered once-in-decades have become routine and are striking unexpected geographies: Cloudbursts in Chennai, floods in the deserts of Rajasthan and Leh, and hill stations registering record-high temperatures. Seasonality has frayed. Heatwaves have swept through January and February; monsoon-like rains have extended in to November. Crop cycles are flattening, reflected in widespread agricultural losses. Minimum temperatures during winter now resemble those of early summer. Himalayan states report above-normal temperatures year-round.

According to CSE-DTE's assessment, published in its annual Climate India report, January-September 2025 is the first in four years during which extreme events struck the country nearly every day. It is also the first year in which all states and Union territories (UT) reported such events. In 2023, only six states and UTs reported such events. For eight consecutive months from February to September 2025, as many as 30 or more states and UTs reported extreme weather events.

Blurring of seasonality is clear. India experienced extreme weather on 57 of 59 winter days in 2025 (January-February): Three heatwaves, 51 days of heavy rainfall, flooding and landslides and 26 days of cold waves. In pre-monsoon months of March to May, heavy rain, floods and landslides occurred on 86 days — a departure from previous years when hailstorms dominated. The monsoon season is becoming deadlier for lives and crops; yet is paradoxically recording more heatwaves.

These shifts are manifesting in varied ways. Farmers are changing cropping calendars, often skipping June for sowing kharif crops. Schools and colleges in many states now declare summer holidays as early as late March. More states shut institutions due to heavy rain in the post-monsoon months, including October. The flowering and fruiting cycles of many trees have changed.

It has been established that human migration out of Africa was shaped by changes in climate. For 12,000 years, human civilisation flourished in stable climatic conditions. But the current phase is different, and the changes threaten to upend our very existence.