A small tea grower using a leaf cutting machine near Kotagiri, Nilgiris.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

This year’s powerful El Niño and the record global heat it’s driving, along with severe droughts, wildfires and shrinking water supplies, could lead to nearly half a million more deaths worldwide by the end of February, according to a research report released Wednesday (September 23, 2026).

The grim warning by the University of Chicago-based Climate Impact Lab says that as many as 451,000 more heat-related deaths between June and the end of February could be attributed to El Niño, compared with heat deaths expected in a typical year.

The heaviest toll, the group says, is expected in poorer countries, already struggling with food insecurity and high energy costs, partly due to climate change and the fallout of the war in Iran.

Michael Greenstone, a co-founder of the group and the study’s co-author, said the heat danger will likely persist beyond February — even though this El Niño is expected to end by then. The fallout of the weather phenomenon could be felt well into next summer, he added.

The research, he said, shows that heat is most dangerous in places that are already hot and relatively poor.

“If you’re already in a hot place, the extra couple of degrees are going to be much more dangerous,” he said. Wealthier places, he added, generally have greater access to air conditioning, reliable water supplies and functioning health systems.

The study combined seasonal temperature forecasts with localised estimates of how high temperatures affect mortality across more than 24,000 regions worldwide.

Researchers estimated the additional heat-related deaths by comparing deaths expected under El Niño-driven high temperatures with deaths expected if temperatures remained similar to what they have been in the last three decades. The projected fatalities are for the entire El Niño period, from June 2026 until the end of February 2027.

The study by Greenstone and his colleagues also warns that the Global South — a term that isn’t geographical but a reference to developing countries in general — will bear the heaviest burden of the excessive heat.

The researchers behind the report found that the Sahel region in Africa — countries along the semiarid southern fringe of the Sahara Desert — is expected to be the hardest-hit, with about 66,800 additional deaths caused by El Nino-driven heat.

Other major hot spots include South and Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America, according to the report. The researchers project about 19,400 additional heat-related deaths across the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, as well as 19,300 in Indonesia, 15,800 in India and 13,300 in Brazil.

With such staggering numbers, there are recommended measures that governments can take, the report says. They include heat-warning systems, cooling centres, hydration stations, protections for outdoor workers, expanded hospital capacity and targeted outreach to elderly people and other vulnerable groups.

The authors also call for what they describe as anticipatory financing, so governments can move resources before dangerous heat peaks.

Abhiyant Tiwari, a heat expert at NRDC India who was not involved in the study, said the report’s projections should serve as a call to action rather than be another reason for alarm.

But while it’s one thing to have well-thought-out plans — as India does — implementing these plans and raising needed funds remains a challenge, he said.

“The real measure of our preparedness is not how many heat warnings we issue, but how effectively we protect people and reduce preventable deaths,” Mr. Tiwari added.

El Niño is a natural climate pattern, but this year’s unusually strong event is occurring on a planet already warmed by human-caused climate change, increasing the risks from extreme heat.

The Climate Impact Lab said global land temperatures during this El Niño could be higher by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.1 degrees Fahrenheit), producing 44% more extremely hot days than in a typical year. The report said those temperature increases may mirror conditions that climate change could make common some 20 years from now.

That’s why this El Niño could offer a preview of what’s ahead as the planet continues to warm, the report said. It’s also an opportunity for decision-makers “to see exactly where emergency actions can be taken now to save tens of thousands of lives,” the authors say.

Published – September 23, 2026 10:43 am IST

Chinese experts have pointed to a clear link between rising temperatures, which have led to significant glacial retreat on the Tibetan Plateau, and the deadly August 26 glacial collapse on the Nepal-China border, warning of growing risks from more glacial flood outbursts, with more than 14,000 glacial lakes mapped on the plateau.
| Photo Credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

ISMA Director General Deepak Ballani addresses a press conference on the recent surge in domestic sugar prices, in New Delhi on August 24.
| Photo Credit: ANI

The stage is set as it has been for years, with music, colourful costumes, and dramatic dialogue. However, there are no demons to slay or kingdoms to defend. Instead, the story unfolds around an invisible enemy that people from across Tamil Nadu know all too well: blistering heat.

It is an unlikely story for Kattaikoothu, the centuries-old Tamil folk theatre that has long drawn from the Mahabharata and other epics. But for Thilagavathi Palani, using the art form to talk about contemporary issues is nothing new. Over the years, she has staged productions on anaemia, leprosy, gender equality, and other social issues.

More than two decades ago, the 36-year-old from Kalavai Koot Road in Ranipet became one of the first women to perform professionally in Kattaikoothu, breaking into an art form that had long remained the preserve of men. Beginning Tuesday, Sri Thilagam Kattaikkuttu Kuzhu will premiere the show at Vedavalli Vidyalaya, Ranipet, before touring seven schools across Ranipet and Tiruvannamalai — districts that regularly experience the highest temperatures in Tamil Nadu.

The troupe comprises 13 members, including five professional artistes and five schoolchildren trained in Kattaikoothu by Thilagavathi. She believes involving children on stage makes the message more relatable. “When students see performances by children of similar age, the connection is stronger,” she says.

The production was developed over six months in collaboration with Asar, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in the climate and education space. Born into a lower-income family as the eldest of five daughters, Thilagavathi first encountered Kattaikoothu through her uncle, who taught the traditional theatre form. She was the only girl among boys learning the art in her village.

In 2002, she joined the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam in Kancheepuram, where she trained under renowned Kattaikoothu exponent P. Rajagopal. After eight years of rigorous training and a two-year apprenticeship, she became one of the first female Kattaikoothu artistes in a tradition that had, for generations, been performed exclusively by men. “It gave me confidence,” she says. 

Since then, she has continued to expand the possibilities of Kattaikoothu, guided by the belief that art should not merely be a means of livelihood, but also a vehicle for social change. 

After moving to Chennai, she was involved in social work with the fisherfolk, women, and children, and also worked with Katradi Trust, founded by dancer and social worker Sangeeta Isvaran. Through her work, she was approached by Asar for a series on the environment through koothu.

‘Giving voice to dying discourses’

Thilagavathi dismisses the idea that Kattaikoothu is a dying art form. “That’s a misconception, especially in cities,” she says. “Come to the villages during the festival season and you’ll see how vibrant it still is. Kattaikoothu isn’t a dying art form. It gives voice to dying discourses.”

Researchers from Asar shared articles and material explaining climate change and the effects of rising temperatures on people’s health and livelihoods. Thilagavathi said the examples came from different parts of the world. “But as I kept reading them, I realised the same things were happening around me,” she says. She remembered the widening of Arcot-Cheyyar Bypass, where hundreds of trees on the roadside had been cut to make way for the work. “Now, the heat has become unbearable,” she says.

Around the time she was reading news reports about older people succumbing to extreme heat and studies linking high temperatures to adverse pregnancy outcomes, her sister tragically suffered a miscarriage. While Thilagavathi does not attribute her sister’s loss to the heat, the experience made the issue deeply personal. “I began thinking about how to portray loss and the human impact of climate change on stage,” she says.

That became the foundation of Veppathin Veriyattam. The play follows the lives of children struggling to learn in overheated classrooms, women cooking in tin-roofed homes, and outdoor workers enduring dangerous temperatures. One of the play’s characters is veppam (heat) itself. “I wanted people to look at heat from a different perspective. I even wanted the audience to feel sorry for the heat, because it isn’t the villain by itself. It is what we have done to the environment that has made it this way,” she adds.

Published – July 28, 2026 01:16 am IST

A minute is always 60 seconds. But it rarely feels that way for Kavitha, 40, selling fish under an unforgiving sun.

By seven each morning, she has to arrange the day’s catch neatly on a small table at Chennai’s bustling Nochikuppam fish market, one of the city’s fishing hamlets tucked between the Marina Loop Road and the Bay of Bengal. Buyers drift in, bargain, leave, and return.

“Between each sale, I keep an eye on the fish. As the mornings are getting hotter, I worry about selling everything before the sun spoils their freshness,” she says.

Rising temperatures are not the only challenge fisherwomen face. Changes in the sea itself have made earning a livelihood far more difficult. Kavitha’s husband is among the artisanal fishermen who plan their work around the predictable rhythms of two fishing seasons: vaadai, characterised by northerly winds and currents, and kachan, marked by southerly winds and calmer seas. But those rhythms are no longer as dependable.

Changing sea, shrinking catch

According to S. Palayam, veteran fisherman from Urur Kuppam, Chennai, the traditionally calmer kachan season has become, on average, 33 days shorter than it once was, while the vaadai season now lingers well beyond its usual withdrawal.

His study, ‘Sea Changed; Seasons Changed: A Fisher Science View of Climate Change’, which draws on daily observations recorded over 1,179 days between September 2018 and October 2023, also found an increase in rough sea days during kachan, disruptions in the productive transition between the two seasons, and the disappearance in recent years of vanda thanni — a nutrient-rich phenomenon that traditionally brought abundant fish closer to shore.

Fisherwomen sense these changes not through measurements of wind speeds or currents, but through the uncertainty they bring to daily work. Disruptions at sea, whether rough weather, poor catches or fewer fishing days, reduces the fish available for sale, thereby shrinking women’s daily earnings and, with it, the financial agency they exercise within their families.

“My husband manages the bigger expenses and repays our loans. But the money I earn gives me some independence. I can buy groceries, pay for my son’s school needs, or spend on small things without having to ask anyone,” says Kavitha.

Fishers say the waters close to the shore no longer yield the catch they once did. Forced to travel farther into the sea, they incur higher fuel costs and spend longer hours fishing, even as their returns continue to shrink. “We’re spending ₹5,000 to ₹7,000 more per month, but the catch is much less,” says Kavitha.

Although overfishing by mechanised trawlers remains the biggest reason for declining catches, many fisherwomen say changing weather and sea conditions have made their work increasingly uncertain. The seasonal cues they once relied on are no longer dependable. Erratic winds, rougher seas, and unpredictable ocean currents have made it increasingly difficult to anticipate fish availability and plan fishing trips as they did in the past.

Pollution deepens woes

S. Velvizhi, marine biologist at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), says climate change is only one of several pressures bearing down on marine fisheries. Marine pollution, overfishing and the degradation of critical habitats such as coral reefs, seagrass beds and river estuaries have all contributed to the depletion of fish stocks, she says.

In Pulicat, India’s second-largest brackish water lagoon that straddles Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, fishers say declining catches are also linked to the periodic closure of the lagoon’s sea mouths, which regulate the exchange of water with the Bay of Bengal. When these remain closed, water flow into the lagoon is restricted, salinity rises during the summer months, and fish populations decline.

Standing knee-deep in the waters of the Pulicat lake in Tiruvallur district, Sarala, 50, spends hours hand-picking prawns to earn a living. But the returns have dwindled sharply over the years. Decades of industrial pollution have degraded the lagoon’s ecosystem, while invasive species believed to have been introduced through ballast water have further disrupted native fish populations.

Sarala recalls earning ₹200 to ₹300 after two hours of prawn picking; today, she says, four hours in the lagoon fetches her only about ₹150.

The shrinking income has consequences beyond the day’s meals, Sarala says. “I use it to look after my elderly parents, pay my monthly seetu [chit] contribution, and save whatever little I can for my daughter. Earlier, I could manage all that. Now, after meeting everyday expenses, there’s hardly anything left to save.”

Making ends meet

Like many fisherwomen in Tamil Nadu, Selvi, 50, a resident of Pattipulam in Chengalpattu, says she survives by borrowing. As declining fish catches have reduced her daily earnings, she has found it increasingly difficult to meet household expenses, let alone repay old debts. She currently juggles five or six loans at a time, borrowing from one lender to repay another and to keep her fish vending business going. “I keep rotating the loans,” she says. “If the catch is poor, there isn’t enough money to repay them. So I take another loan. That’s how we’ve been managing.”

‘Meenava’ Shanthi, a fisherwoman based in Kasimedu, says the welfare system continues to view fisheries through a largely male lens. Although the Tamil Nadu Fishers and Fishworkers Welfare Board is intended to cover those engaged across the fisheries sector, she argues that there are few welfare measures tailored to the realities of women’s work.

“Most of the welfare schemes are meant for those who go out to sea. Even when benefits reach a family, they usually come through the male fisher. Women like us, who sell, process and dry fish, don’t have any support meant specifically for us,” she says.

With little by way of targeted government support, many fisherwomen are finding their own ways to stay afloat. As fish vending has become less reliable, some are taking up tailoring, catering, daily wage labour, or work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (now VB-G RAM G) during lean periods.

Coping with change

In the hours between returning from the market and preparing for the next day’s work, Kavitha has begun stitching clothes. At first, she learnt simply to sew for herself, her mother, and her sister. Encouraged by her younger sister, she now hopes to turn it into an additional source of income.

“My younger sister keeps telling me, ‘Why don’t you take orders from others? You stitch well.’” She has not yet begun taking customers but sees tailoring as a way to cushion her family’s income on days when there is little fish to sell. “If I can get more orders, I’ll continue doing it. At least there will be some income even when business at the fish market is poor,” she says.

Others are turning to value-added products such as dried fish and pickles or small self-help group enterprises. These supplementary incomes help soften the blow, but women say they rarely compensate for the steady earnings that fish once brought. “A few of us get together to make small batches of fish pickle, which we sell through a neighbourhood grocery shop,” says Sarala.

Velvizhi says many fishing villages have already demonstrated that alternative livelihood models can work when women receive the right support. “There’s much more of an entrepreneurial mindset among fisherwomen today. Earlier, when we suggested making value-added products like fish pickles or marketing them through WhatsApp, many were hesitant. Now, they’re far more open to trying new ideas,” she says.

But adapting to a changing fisheries sector, she says, requires more than encouraging women to diversify. The State must invest in building new skills that match today’s markets. “The old approaches won’t be enough anymore. Women need digital literacy, digital marketing skills, quality control, and training in value addition so they can access better markets and earn more from their products,” she suggests.

(This story is part of the Asian College of Journalism’s Climate Change Media Hub Mentorship Programme.) 

The United Nations weather agency forecast a moderate or possibly strong El Nino that could drive up global temperatures and increase the risk of extreme weather in 2026. Experts said the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. Meteorologists forecast it will rival — or exceed — a record El Nino that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that over 1,300 excess deaths had been recorded in Europe since June 21 in connection with the record-breaking heatwave roasting much of the continent. 

India Meteorological Department (IMD), said on Tuesday (June 30, 2026) that rainfall in July — the most important of the monsoon months — will be “below normal” or less than 94% of what is usual for the month. India’s current monsoon deficit is 40%.

Published – July 02, 2026 06:29 pm IST

A cyclist stops to fill his bottle at a water fountain on the Vistula River boulevards, amid a heatwave in Warsaw, Poland, on June 28, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Emperor penguins. File Photo: Warner Independent Pictures via AP

India’s announcement of its revised Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement — the term applied to the mitigation and other climate action targets that countries voluntarily commit to under the agreement — represents a considered step forward when India’s energy and development policies are encountering serious headwinds. It is clear that the government has opted for continuity and incremental advance with respect to India’s earlier NDCs. It is also clearly confident that its commitments will nevertheless be more than adequate in relation to its equitable share of global climate action, in keeping with climate justice and within its expected commitments as a developing nation.

Three climate goals

As the press communique after the Cabinet approval of the updated NDCs noted, there are three specific enhancements that have been committed. The first is an increase in the reduction of emissions intensity of its GDP, from 45% below 2005 levels by 2030 to 47% below 2005 levels by 2035. The second is ensuring that 60% of installed capacity for power generation is from non-fossil fuel sources, while the third is the enhancement of forest and tree cover carbon sinks to 3.5 – 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent above 2005 levels.

India’s climate policies are best understood in the context of its structural constraints as a lower middle income developing country, that determine its available choices for climate action. Over the last three decades, these constraints have not substantially changed, which is also why India continues to insist on the relevance of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But apart from these, given the structure of the Paris Agreement that requires renewed and enhanced commitments to climate mitigation every five years, short-term considerations have also begun to have a considerable weight in the formulation of the NDCs. The rapid deterioration of the global environment for climate action over the last year has undoubtedly brought this issue to the fore.

Enthusiasm for climate action

Structural constraints have not, however, dampened enthusiasm for climate action in India, both at the level of the Centre and the State governments. There is a considerable range of activities designed to set India on the path to low-carbon development, drawing significant public and private sector efforts and resources, including electric vehicles, enhancement of energy efficiency, promotion and deployment of non-fossil fuel sources of electricity generation, new technologies such as green hydrogen and more recently, the active promotion of carbon capture and storage efforts.

But given India’s developmental levels today, it is clearly premature for India to convert all such efforts into the significantly more onerous and accountable commitments that are the NDCs, the progress towards which is to be reported every two years in the Biennial Transparency Report (BTR) to the UNFCCC.

A section of global and domestic public opinion has raised the issue of the adequacy of India’s NDCs relative to a global temperature goal of 1.5 degree warming above pre-industrial levels (the more ambitious part of the Paris Agreement’s goals). Some have downplayed the new targets, one commentator going so far as to call it “a walk in the park”. Others call for increased generation from renewables as the metric and not installed capacity. Even some sections of opinion that have welcomed the NDCs, appear nevertheless to be uncertain on whether these new commitments are genuinely the best that India can make at this time.

The cost of going green

All the above variants of the “India can (must) do more argument” ignore some critical realities that contextualise India’s climate actions. Given that India’s natural energy source is overwhelmingly coal, it is inaccurate to view improvements in emissions efficiency of GDP and the corresponding bending of its emissions trajectory as a “natural” corollary of India’s growth story. Priority to electricity from renewable sources comes with significant costs, including backing down readily available and often cheaper or comparably priced coal-based thermal power, further tilting a playing field that privileges renewable energy to sustain our climate commitments.

Renewable energy (RE) projects including utility scale battery storage have begun to make their appearance in India’s power sector. But the corresponding scaling up of India’s battery storage capacity, required for ensuring the stability of generation even from the proposed 2030 RE targets will run into a few trillion rupees at least. Part of such expansion would have to be funded by the government, deploying resources that would have been utilised in other sectors. At the very least, the deployment of such large-scale battery systems is not immediately feasible. The most globally widespread option of energy storage in reverse pumped hydropower systems, has very limited scope in India at present. Additionally, environmental concerns, and water needs for competing uses such as irrigation, as well as the regulatory challenges faced by all large hydro projects are likely to preclude any rapid expansion.

Optimistic RE projections, not only in India but even globally, have run into the lack of transmission capacity and the challenges of grid balancing, with the associated costs often omitted when referring to the cost-effectiveness of RE power.

Since, for India, coal is the mainstay of power generation when solar and wind cease, unlike the large-scale gas and hydro available elsewhere, the full utilisation of the available RE capacity will inevitably have to be “curtailed”, while adding to the operation and maintenance costs for thermal power operated in this cyclical fashion. These add further to the true cost that India bears for the pursuit of its climate commitments.

Improving energy efficiency in other sectors is also being pursued vigorously, including the introduction of mandatory emissions intensity targets in key industries. The early ramp up of electric vehicles, while the jump from BSIV to BSVI vehicle emissions standards was just coming into place, was another leap-frog moment, whose cost to the economy must not be underestimated. Since the 26th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change at Glasgow, every Central government budget has seen a range of initiatives and resource commitment across various aspects of climate mitigation. Indeed, a major knowledge gap today is that while future costs of increased mitigation action are routinely calculated, the cost burden attached to India’s mitigation initiatives undertaken so far, in the absence of any significant climate finance, have yet to be estimated in a reliable manner.

Accounting for India’s developmental future

At a more over-arching level, India’s mitigation challenge cannot be based on a simple extrapolation of the current structural features and trends of its economy.

India’s developmental future needs room for further large-scale growth in manufacturing and industry, expansion in the provision of goods and services to its population at adequate levels beyond the minimum, and an urban transition that has only just begun. In this context, the “India can do more” arguments that rely on such extrapolation of economic trends and the persistence of current structural features, miss the urgent need to hedge India’s developmental future.

India cannot commit its NDCs to preserving the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, when the goal is rapidly slipping out of reach. This a trend that India cannot reverse, given that its per capita emissions are a third of the global average. Even otherwise, under the voluntary emissions reduction NDCs of the Paris Agreement, the benefits of India’s reduction in emissions below any business-as-usual baseline, are distributed primarily to the big emitters globally, due to their inadequate efforts, and proportionately less to India, especially when the largest historical emitter has walked out of all climate treaties and seeks to dismantle climate action both at home and abroad

India’s climate commitments have to be strategic and circumspect, while its NDCs are formulated in informed self-awareness of its, to use the language of the Paris Agreement, “national circumstances.”

(T. Jayaraman is with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru. Views expressed are personal.)

Published – April 07, 2026 11:01 pm IST