Indian cities could see far higher temperature rise than projected, says study

Climate models may be underestimating how much warmer India’s non-metro cities could get than rural areas due to global warming – by half to two degrees, according to a study published on Wednesday (February 4, 2026).

Researchers from the University of East Anglia in the UK analyzed how temperatures would rise in 104 “medium-sized” cities in tropical and subtropical regions under a 2°C warming scenario, the emissions path the world is currently on. Rather than asking how warmer hot spots are getting on average, the study asks a different question: How much faster are cities warming than surrounding countryside?

For example, it found that land surface temperatures in Patiala, Punjab, may increase at twice the rate of warming predicted by global climate models compared to the surrounding countryside; this is an extreme “outlier”. Karur in Pakistan was the only other place in the researchers’ analysis to show such different warming. This means that if the models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessments predict a 2°C temperature increase in Patiala, the increase will actually be 4°C when urban heat island effects are taken into account. An additional 2°C increase in temperature could have significant impacts on susceptibility to heatstroke, water availability and public cooling expenditure.

Urban heat island effect

The study covers 18 Indian cities and finds that all of them are warming faster than nearby rural areas. On average, Indian cities face around 45% more warming than Earth System Models (ESMs) predict for the wider region. In practical terms, this increases expected urban warming from about 2.2°C alone as suggested by climate models to roughly 2.6-2.7°C when city-specific effects are included. The urban heat island effect is the tendency for cities to be hotter than nearby rural areas.

In the three largest cities by population, the largest changes are seen in Jalandhar (India), Fuyang (China) and Kirkuk (Iraq), experiencing an additional temperature change of 0.7-0.8°C compared to their rural surroundings.

However, other cities are experiencing significantly greater warming, such as Asyut (Egypt) and Shangqui (China), with additional changes of 1.5-2°C; which is up to 100% more than in their hinterland.

Coarse resolution masks differences

According to the report published in the peer-reviewed journal, this difference Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThis is not because climate models underestimate regional warming, but because of the extent to which models operating at coarse resolution can miss differences in the response of urban and rural land surfaces to climate change. In most climate models used by the IPCC, cities effectively blend in with their surroundings, masking differences in urban and rural landscapes.

The researchers measured these changes by combining satellite observations of land surface temperature from 2002 to 2020 with a machine learning model. The model ‘learns’ how physical factors – particularly urban-rural differences in vegetation, humidity and albedo (the proportion of solar heat reflected from the ground) – control the surface urban heat island today. The authors then applied projected changes to these variables to predict how the urban heat island would develop in a 2°C warmer world.

The dominant factor is vegetation-based cooling of rural areas. In northern India, climate models predict increases in moisture and vegetation productivity in rural areas. While vegetated rural areas cool efficiently through evaporation, cities dominated by impermeable surfaces and private drainage do not benefit to the same extent. As a result, rural areas cool or warm more slowly, and the temperature difference between cities and villages widens.

“Urban heat stress from climate change is a growing concern; many cities in the tropics and subtropics may be hotter than their rural surroundings, increasing their vulnerability to rising temperatures,” said co-author Manoj Joshi from the UEA Climate Research Unit. “Our results show that some cities in Northeast China and Northern India are projected to warm by 3°C, despite warming in the inner regions of the Earth System Model.” 1.5-2°C.”