IIT-Delhi study finds human activity drives India’s ‘wild’ weather

Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription

The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective.

First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming.

Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day.

Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers

Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there

The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features.

Rain pours misery on a horse in Bengaluru on June 13, 2026. | Photo Credit: Sudhakara Jain

Of late, increasingly concentrated rainfall and violent floods have devastated India’s cities and farms alike. For years, scientists have debated whether this is simply natural variation or the direct result of climate change.

A new study in Environmental Research Letters has found the smoking gun. Specifically, for the first time, researchers have dispositive evidence that human activity is the primary driver.

The researchers, from IIT-Delhi and KSMDB College in Kollam, analysed rainfall data from 1905 to 2014. Then they used a technique called fingerprinting, where, like a forensic investigator looking for a fingerprint at a crime scene, the scientists looked for specific signs of human influence in the atmosphere. By comparing real-world observations with several computer models, they were able to separate natural weather cycles like the El Niño from changes caused specifically by human activity.

Editorial | ​Missed call: On India and the southwest monsoon

The work has revealed a contest in India’s skies between greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere, and aerosols, particles from car exhaust and factories that scatter sunlight and can actually suppress rains. The impact was most visible in the country’s core monsoon zone, including West Central India.

“In West Central India, we find both observed increases in extreme precipitation indices and evidence that greenhouse gas forcing is a dominant driver of this intensification,” T.S. Chaithra, a PhD student at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi, and the study’s first author, told The Hindu. “Together, these findings indicate that the statistical characteristics of extreme rainfall are changing over time.”

Many Indian scientists and policymakers are working to reduce air pollution. However, as the air becomes cleaner and the aerosol load drops, the cooling effect will vanish. When this happens, the full force of greenh