Guwahati: After witnessing massive floods and landslides due to incessant rainfall during this monsoon season, the temperatures in the northeast have soared this week.
Guwahati, the largest city in the region, recorded 38.1 degrees Celsius on July 14 which was 6.2 degrees above normal and it also happened to be the second highest recorded temperature of the city in the last 30 years.
The highest recorded temperature in the month of July for Guwahati is 38.4 degrees Celsius, which was recorded on July 18 in 2018.
Other cities in Assam and Northeast are also experiencing scorching heat with temperatures skyrocketing accompanied by very high humidity.
The city of Silchar in Southern Assam clocked 39.6 degrees Celsius, the second highest temperature for the city in July.
Agartala, the capital city of Tripura, recorded 37.1 degrees Celsius on July 14, making it the second highest recorded temperate in July, the highest in July for the city is 37.7 degrees Celsius recorded on July 17, 1992.
Shillong has also not been spared by the rise in mercury with the capital city of Meghalaya recording 28.5 degrees Celsius on July 14.
Meanwhile, in a recent study about climate change projections for the North-East States indicated overall warming of both summer and winter minimum temperatures, an increase in the number of rainy days and an increase in the number of heavy rainfall events across almost all the districts of the region.
The study projects changes in temperature and rainfall patterns in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura over the next three decades (from 2021 to 2050) and compares it to the historical period (from 1990 to 2019).
It analysed two representative scenarios: first at moderate emissions, what in technical terms is called as RCP 4.5, and second, for high emissions (RCP 8.5). There are four RCPs, the Representative Concentration Pathways, each of which is a greenhouse gas concentration trajectory adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and used for climate modelling in IPCC reports.
Stating that historically (1990-2019), temperature and rainfall have increased, and rainfall variability is high across all the Northeastern States, the important findings from the study include that there is an overall warming of both summer and winter minimum temperatures, an increase in the number of rainy days (more than 2.5 mm rainfall per day), and an increase in the number of heavy rainfall events across almost all the districts of the Northeastern States.
It also found that the summer maximum and the winter minimum temperatures are projected to increase by 1 degree Celsius to 1.5 degrees Celsius under the RCP 4.5 scenario and 1 degree Celsius to 2 degrees Celsius under the RCP 8.5 scenario.
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