India grappled with extreme weather events for 235 days out of the first nine months of 2023, a slight decrease from the 241 days recorded in the same period last year, as per India 2023: An assessment of extreme weather events brought out by Down To Earth (DTE) magazine and the Centre for Science and Environment.

All Indian states are significantly climate vulnerable and the gap between the least vulnerable state (Maharashtra) and the most vulnerable state (Jharkhand) is small, as per the Union government’s “Climate Vulnerability Assessment for Adaptation Planning in India Using a Common Framework 2019-20”. Yet robust data on extreme weather events, which are increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change, is not available publicly. This happens because government agencies use different definitions and data collection sources, which obscure the bigger picture. This report, in its second year, is an attempt to build an evidence base on the frequency and expanding geography of extreme weather events in India. It provides season-by-season, month-by-month, and region-by-region analyses of extreme weather events and the loss and damage they caused in the first nine months of 2023.