When 28-year-old Sonelal Prasad left home on the morning of June 16 for his job at a construction site in Mumbai—the financial capital of India—he didn’t know he’d be digging his own grave. As he worked in the foundation pit of an upcoming high-rise, one of the many in the city, an intense downpour triggered a soil collapse, burying him alive beneath the rain-soaked earth.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Prasad’s death was the result of a dangerous convergence as densely-packed concrete cities expand and new ones mushroom over wetlands, floodplains, and forests across India: climate change and haphazard urban development.
As the construction worker succumbed, the impact of the former was being felt across the city. Between May 25 and May 27 this year, Mumbai’s recorded rainfall was 67,600% above average for that time of year, shattering a century-old record from 1918. And although unprecedented, this wasn’t anomalous. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest report, State of the Climate in Asia 2024, Asia is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average across land and ocean surfaces. The WMO’s analysis found that the warming trend from 1991 to 2024 was nearly double that of the 1961–1990 period, especially over land compared to oceans.
Meanwhile, as urbanization accelerates, cities are hotter than their surrounding rural areas. This phenomenon is known as the urban heat island effect, the extent of which is worsening with climate change. In India, this intensifying city heat is making the monsoon season, and its short-duration, high-intensity rainstorms, more extreme. Add to it a boom in new construction that is barely taking this reality into account, and it can make for a dangerous combination.
Indian cities are warming at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the country, according to a study published in Nature journal in May 2024, with an average increase of 0.53°C per decade. Of this, 0.2°C is directly attributed to urbanization—meaning cities are experiencing 37.73% more warming than nearby rural regions. The impact can be deadly. In 2024, for instance, heat waves in India resulted in over 450 deaths.
“Warming in a city happens due to both climate change and urbanization,” says Vinoj Velu, associate professor of earth, ocean, and climate sciences in Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, who co-authored the recent study. The study analysed 141 Indian cities using satellite data between 2003-2020.“By comparing the temperature change in cities with that in the surrounding rural areas, we could isolate the urbanization effect. Our findings confirmed that nearly all cities are warming, and in many cases, the warming due to urbanization is nearly double that of rural areas.”
Rapid urbanization
As India’s population continues to grow, more people are moving to cities. In response, the country’s urban development—which often sprawls haphazardly rather than following a clear plan—is seeing rapid rise. As per a report by Primus Partners, a management consulting firm, urban areas are expected to contribute 75% to the country’s GDP by 2036. Urban population is expected to swell to 600 million (40% of the population), compared to 31% in 2011. All of this comes at a cost to the climate.
Estimates suggest that urban areas around the world are responsible for 70% of global CO2 emissions, with transport and buildings being among the largest contributors. Kamal Kumar Murari, chairman of Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, says with 40% of India’s population living in urban areas, consumption will spike, leading to a higher carbon footprint among urbanites compared to rural residents.
“This higher consumption in cities … drives greater electricity demand, which in India is still largely met by coal and gas, major sources of emissions,” explains Murari. “So, if cities have more people and higher energy needs, their contribution to emissions, and therefore climate change, is greater. If you reduce emissions in cities, you can address a large part of the global climate problem.”
In 1991, India had only 18 cities with a population of a million or more, according to the census. That is now steadily increasing. In 2011, there were 52 cities. Another report by the State Bank of India last year predicted it would likely be around 75-80 cities by the end of 2024. At the same time, the urban population is growing at an annual rate of over 2%. As per the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global Energy Review 2025, “India’s energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 5.3% in 2024, the highest rate among major economies, driven by rapid economic growth, infrastructure development, and surging energy demand.”
These factors have boosted the number of heat islands around India. And according to experts, this then impacts the intensity of seasonal monsoons and their impacts on cities. “Urban heat extremes due to more heating in cities and more intense rainfall that quickly turns into flooding are two major challenges,” says Subimal Ghosh, convener of the interdisciplinary program in Climate Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. “It is evident that spatial variability in extreme rainfall is increasing. This non-uniformity is likely driven by urbanization and changes in land use and land cover.”
Vinoj agrees, adding that the heat island effect can even impact cloud formation and rainfall. “In many Indian cities like Mumbai, the downwind side receives heavier rainfall due to the way buildings and topography affect airflow. Cities also emit pollutants, especially particulates, that delay rainfall formation. When rain is delayed, clouds grow larger and eventually release heavier rain, often in concentrated bursts,” he says.
Stronger policies are needed
The expansion of cities has already exceeded sustainable limits. Most cities are expanding through horizontal development that ignores the environmental vulnerabilities. Rapid construction, led by corporate developers, has jeopardized natural floodplains and critical biodiversity zones.
Lara Jesani, a lawyer and the National Secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), a civil society group, has been fighting for environmental issues for more than a decade in Mumbai. Jesani says that the environmental policies have been eroded over the years to fast-track infrastructure and real estate development. “Through targeted amendments in laws, construction is being legally allowed in ecologically sensitive areas under the guise of public infrastructure or memorials [such as statues or government buildings]. These natural ecosystems play a critical role in regulating urban temperatures and managing flood risks. But because many of these lands are privately owned and lack protection under current environmental laws, they are being sold off to developers.”
Jesani believes that addressing the impacts of climate change requires a structural overhaul of both environmental governance and urban planning. That includes enforcing meaningful environmental regulations, halting unnecessary luxury development, prioritizing public transport over private infrastructure, and integrating community knowledge into conservation efforts.
Nationally, the country is already taking some steps to reduce its climate impact. It is projected that India’s current climate policies are set to significantly curb carbon emissions by four billion metric tons between 2020 and 2030.
This will directly benefit cities. Having a clean energy supply, though, is only one piece of the solution. Better city planning is essential, says Murari. This means managing four key contributors to urban extreme heat: construction, air conditioning, traffic, and industry.
“In many cities, construction is so dense and congested that there’s no room for ventilation,” he says. “Once heat is trapped, it stays. Even the best-planned cities like Singapore are now facing the problem of urban re-islanding, which shows how pervasive this issue is. The best kind of urban development both from a development perspective and a climate perspective is a more dispersed model. This kind of spatial planning could be much more effective from the standpoint of managing urban heat.”
Some cities are now adopting Heat Action Plans, such as Ahmedabad in Gujarat which created the first such plan in India in 2013 after a severe heat wave in 2010 resulted in “1,344 excess deaths compared to the average of the same month in the two surrounding years,” according to a 2014 study. Murari says that the Ahmedabad Heat Action Plan has been adopted by at least 10 cities across India: “The national government has also issued guidelines instructing various administrative bodies to develop their own heat action plans.”
There has been some slowly growing interest in research, and action plans have been implemented in cities like Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Rajkot, Surat, Jhansi, Hazaribagh, and Delhi, to tackle the combined risks of urban heat and worsening monsoons. This includes boosting urban forests, parks, green spaces, the restoration and creation of urban water bodies, sustainable urban drainage systems, rainwater harvesting, cool roofs, well-spaced buildings, and airflow corridors help alleviate the challenges from significant shifts in rainfall patterns or heat waves. Experts also suggest growing “tree canopies and vegetated corridors” to help cool cities down. On top of this, proper drainage systems are needed in cities to prevent flooding—the lack of adequate drainage played a major role in the harm caused during Mumbai’s recent flooding.
Vinoj says that because India’s cities are densely populated, even small local microclimatic changes can have serious consequences for human health and infrastructure. “Unfortunately, India was lacking comprehensive urban climate studies, but more are now underway, and we expect many new findings in the coming years,” he says. “It’s also crucial to focus on proper planning of smaller cities, which are still growing. Unlike large cities, which are difficult and expensive to overhaul, smaller cities offer an opportunity for sustainable development.”
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Urbanization Is Intensifying India’s Summer Heat and Rain )
Also on site :
- Evacuations ordered after brush fire breaks out in Laguna Beach
- Deal signed for $500m Chaka Housing Project in Addis Ababa
- General YouTube: Germany’s newest military chief is a warlord of his own Ukraine-cheering fantasyland