These climate projections are a crucial tool for action, delivering insights that move beyond theory. By providing precise forecasts, they enable stakeholders — policymakers, local authorities, and communities — to prepare for specific regional risks. These insights will guide practical, effective strategies for adapting to climate changes and mitigating risks, ultimately helping to safeguard lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems across India.

These climate projections are crafted to serve a diverse range of stakeholders, including:

1. Government Officials and Policymakers – To support informed decision-making and strategic planning for climate resilience and adaptation.
2. Journalists and Media – To provide accurate, localised climate insights for raising public awareness and communicating the urgency of climate action.
3. Educators and Students – To foster climate literacy and empower future generations with data-driven understanding of climate impacts.
4. Activists and Civil Society Organisations – To enable advocacy efforts and community mobilisation for sustainable and resilient practices.

Individual reports for each state and union territory offer district-level insights, allowing local authorities and residents to develop tailored resilience plans. The information is available through interactive web platforms, ensuring that communities across India have accessible, actionable data for planning their climate responses.

A 1.5°C rise in global temperature above pre-industrial levels would severely impact India’s ecosystems, economy, and public health. As climate extremes like heat waves, droughts, and floods become more frequent, their effects will be felt across India’s diverse landscapes, exacerbating the already complex socioeconomic challenges. For India, the stakes are particularly high due to the country’s dependence on agriculture and natural resources, making it especially vulnerable to climate impacts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) developed Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) to investigate the potential future impacts of climate change and possible responses to it. These scenarios describe different possible future worlds. Each one is based on a different set of assumptions about how people, the economy, and technology will change in the future.

The SSPs make it easy to compare how different socioeconomic paths affect greenhouse gas emissions and the changes in the Earth’s climate that come from them. They also give a way to judge how well different strategies for preventing and dealing with climate change are. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) developed Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) to investigate the potential future impacts of climate change and possible responses to it. These scenarios describe different possible future worlds. Each one is based on a different set of assumptions about how people, the economy, and technology will change in the future.

The SSPs make it easy to compare how different socioeconomic paths affect greenhouse gas emissions and the changes in the Earth’s climate that come from them. They also give a way to judge how well different strategies for preventing and dealing with climate change are working.

The SSPs are based on five different socioeconomic pathways:

SSP1: ​“Sustainability”: 

This pathway assumes that society will take strong and coordinated action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change, leading to a more sustainable future.

SSP2: ​“Middle of the Road”: 

This path assumes that society will take moderate steps to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change, leading to a future with moderate effects.

SSP3: ​“Regional Rivalry”: 

This path is based on the idea that society won’t do much to reduce emissions or adapt to climate change, which would lead to a future with high emissions and bad effects.

SSP4: ​“Inequality”: 

This pathway assumes that society will take little action to reduce emissions or adapt to climate change, but that economic growth will be inequitably distributed, leading to a future with high emissions and severe impacts.

SSP5: ​“Fossil-Fueled Development”: 

This pathway assumes that society will continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels for energy, leading to a future with very high emissions and severe impacts.

These scenarios are not predictions of what will happen in the future, but rather a set of plausible alternative futures that provide a basis for understanding the potential consequences of different policy choices and socioeconomic pathways.

The projections examine two IPCC climate scenarios: SSP2‑4.5 and SSP5‑8.5. SSP2‑4.5, a ​“Middle of the Road” pathway, anticipates a global population of 9 billion by 2100, moderate economic growth, and high income inequality, with a transition to non-fossil energy sources and limited investment in carbon capture, targeting a 2‑degree warming limit. In contrast, SSP5‑8.5, or ​“Fossil Fuel Development,” envisions rapid economic and population growth with a strong reliance on fossil fuels, likely resulting in 4‑degree warming by 2100, well above the Paris Agreement goals. These scenarios offer insights for guiding climate policy and adaptation efforts.

The report uses downscaled, bias-corrected data based on the work of Mishra et al. (2020). Climate projections are made using data from 13 CMIP6 models for precipitation, temperature, and humidity at a high resolution (0.25° x 0.25°). These projections help evaluate climate change impacts, including extreme weather events like heat waves, heavy rainfall, and cyclones. This methodology ensures that the data is reliable and suitable for fine-scale regional assessments. 

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• CMIP6 — CMIP6 stands for Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Phase 6) comprises several climate models which simulate the physics, chemistry and biology of the atmosphere along with land and oceans in high resolution. CMIP6 considers several future scenarios called SSP s with varying degrees of increasing CO2 emissions upto the end of century. 
• Ensemble models  — A collection of climate model simulations called an ensemble is used to make climate projections. Instead of running a single climate model, an ensemble of tens of thousands of versions of the model — each slightly different from the others, are  run. Multiple outcomes are produced as a result of this. Understanding how the Earth’s climate functions can be aided by ensemble climate models.
• Maximum temperature — Maximum temperature is the highest recorded temperature in a day i.e. 24 hours. 
• Minimum temperature — Minimum temperature is the lowest recorded temperature in a day i.e. 24 hours. 
• Consecutive Summer Days — Consecutive summer days index is the greatest number of consecutive summer days in a given time period. Summer days are the number of days where the maximum temperature is above 30 degrees Celsius. 
• Tropical Nights (Temp >20C) — Tropical nights are the number of days where minimum of temperature is above 20 degrees celsius 
• Heat wave- Heat wave Departure of maximum temperature from normal is + 4°C to + 5°C or more for the regions where the normal maximum temperature is more than 40 °C and departure of maximum temperature from normal is + 5°C to + 6°C for regions where the normal maximum temperature is 40 °C or less (Heat Wave is declared only when the maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 40°C for plains and at least 30 °C for Hilly regions). When actual  maximum temperature remains 45°C or more irrespective of normal maximum temperature, heat wave is declared
• HWDI — Heat wave Duration Index — The maximum period for the year of at least 5 consecutive days with the maximum temperature at least 5 °C warmer than the daily climatology of a longer period (say for 30 yrs minimum)
• HWFI — Heat wave Frequency Index — Heat wave frequency index is the number of days per time period where in intervals of at least five consecutive days the daily mean temperature is above a reference value. The reference value is calculated as the 90^th percentile of daily mean temperature of a five day window. 
• Rainy days (RD) — According to India Meteorological Department (IMD), a rainy day has been differentiated as a day with rainfall of 2.5 mm or more than that. 
• Simple daily intensity index (SDII) — The simple precipitation intensity index is computed by taking the sum of precipitation in wet days (days with >1mm of precipitation), and dividing that by the number of wet days in the period. This gives the mean precipitation on wet days.
• 1‑day precipitation (rx1day) — highest precipitation amount in a one-day period. Let RRij be the daily precipitation amount on day i in period j. The maximum one-day value for period j is RX1 dayj = max (RRij). 
• Consecutive 5‑day precipitation (rx5day) — Maximum of consecutive five day precipitation amount in a given time period. 
• Heavy precipitation days (r10mm) — Annual count of days when precipitation ≥ 10mm
• Very heavy precipitation days (r20mm) — Annual count of days when precipitation ≥ 20mm: 
• Consecutive dry days (cdd) — maximum length of dry spell (RR < 1 mm). Let RRij be the daily precipitation amount on day i in period j. Count the largest number of consecutive days where RRij < 1 mm.
• Consecutive wet days(CWD)-consecutive wet days: maximum length of wet spell (RR ≥ 1 mm). Let RRij be the daily precipitation amount on day i in period j. Count the largest number of consecutive days where RRij ≥ 1 mm.
• Humidity — Humidity signifies the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere
• Wet Bulb temperature — The wet bulb temperature is defined as the temperature of a parcel of air cooled to 100% relative humidity (i.e. saturation). 
• Southwest Monsoon-The southwestern summer monsoons occur from June through September. The Thar Desert and adjoining areas of the northern and central Indian subcontinent heat up considerably during the hot summers. This causes a low pressure area over the northern and central Indian subcontinent. To fill this void, the moisture-laden winds from the Indian Ocean rush into the subcontinent. These winds, rich in moisture, are drawn towards the Himalayas. The Himalayas act like a high wall, blocking the winds from passing into Central Asia, and forcing them to rise. As the clouds rise, their temperature drops, and precipitation occurs.
• Northeast Monsoon-With the withdrawal of the southwest monsoon from the northern and central India and the northern parts of the Peninsula by the first half of the October, the wind pattern rapidly changes from south westerly to north easterly and hence the term ​”Northeast  monsoon” is used to describe the period October to December. This is the major period of rainfall in the south peninsula. In Tamil Nadu, this is the main rainy season, accounting for nearly 60 % of annual rainfall in the coastal districts.