India may not have a climate-awareness problem. It may have an action and agency problem. That is one of the central questions emerging from the work of Dr. Jagadish Thaker, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland and a Principal Investigator on the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s research on public attitudes towards climate change in India.

Thaker studies how people understand climate change, how media and communication shape public opinion, and what turns concern into action. His recent work has provided one of the most detailed pictures yet of how Indians perceive climate change and the country’s clean-energy transition.

The latest Climate Change in the Indian Mind survey, conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and CVoter, interviewed 5,427 Indian adults between December 2025 and February 2026. It found that 88% of Indians are worried about global warming and 84% say they have personally experienced its effects. At the same time, 50% say they know little or nothing about global warming, while 84% believe it is happening.

For Thaker, that apparent contradiction is important. People may not always use the language of climate science, but their experiences of heat, floods, changing rainfall and other environmental changes are shaping how they understand the issue.

The findings also point towards a larger challenge: how can climate communication help people move from recognising the problem to participating in solutions?

In this conversation with EdPublica, Thaker discusses what India’s changing climate attitudes reveal about public understanding, why extreme weather can be a powerful entry point for climate communication, and why climate education should connect climate action with jobs, skills, innovation and community participation.

“The challenge now is turning concern into sustained engagement and effective action”

Climate communication has traditionally focused on raising awareness. But your latest survey suggests Indians are already deeply concerned about climate change. What should the next phase of climate communication look like?

The first communication challenge is understanding how much Indians know about the causes and consequences of climate change. Our findings indicate that awareness is low, but a brief explanation is all that is required for Indians to connect their experience with extreme weather events to climate change. So, we must help people make sense of the scientifically accurate causes and consequences, so Indians understand that the problem is not rooted in local issues alone but is also a global issue.

The second communication challenge is to move beyond awareness and focus more on efficacy, agency and solutions. People need credible information about what governments, businesses, communities and households can do, how clean-energy transitions create jobs and improve air quality, and how local actions connect to larger climate goals.

In short, the next generation of climate communication should help people see not only the problem, but also realistic pathways towards solutions and resilience.

The biggest communication story in this survey is not that Indians are unaware of climate change. It is that many Indians who know little about the term ‘global warming’ nevertheless recognise environmental changes around them, report experiencing climate impacts personally, and strongly support climate and energy solutions.

The challenge now is turning concern into sustained engagement and effective action. Extreme weather may be changing how Indians understand climate change

Dr. Jagadish Thaker, Public concern about climate change has risen over the past decade. What do you think has changed?

According to a recent study between 1995 and 2024, Indians faced 430 extreme weather events, including cyclones, floods and severe heat waves, which resulted in around 80,000 deaths and USD 170 billion in economic losses.

The India Meteorological Department has also reported that India recorded its eighth-warmest year on record in 2025. These experiences matter because people often understand climate change through what they experience in their daily lives. Extreme heat, changing rainfall, floods and droughts can make an otherwise abstract global issue much more tangible.

“Climate education should not focus only on risks”

Ninety-five percent of Indians support renewable-energy training for women and youth. How important is climate education in schools and communities?

The support is remarkable. Ninety-five percent favour a national programme prioritising training youth and women for renewable-energy jobs, and 93% support renewable-energy job training more generally.

These findings suggest that climate communication should not focus only on risks. Indians appear highly interested in solutions, skills and opportunities.

Effective climate education can help people understand climate change, but it can also help them see pathways to participate in the transition through employment, innovation and community action. Education is most powerful when it links climate action to everyday benefits and opportunities. Public support may not be the biggest barrier to India’s energy transition

Most Indians support replacing coal with solar and wind. But coal remains central to India’s electricity system. Why is it difficult to bring about behavioural change and effective public policy even when public opinion is this strong?

Public opinion is an important factor shaping energy systems. Infrastructure investments, energy security concerns, employment, institutional capacity and economic considerations all influence policy outcomes.

There are also ongoing challenges around technology upgrades and funding for major changes across the economy and country.

What is striking in our data is how consistently supportive Indians are of the energy transition. These findings suggest that public opinion may be less of a barrier to climate and energy policy than is often assumed.

For communicators, one challenge is helping people understand how long-term energy transitions actually occur and what role citizens can play in them.

Nearly one in three Indians say they have already moved or considered moving because of climate-related disasters. What does this reveal about how climate change is reshaping everyday life?

Twenty-eight percent of Indians report that they have either already moved (11% ) or considered moving (18%) because of weather-related disasters such as extreme heat, droughts, flooding or sea-level rise. Climate change is already influencing decisions about where people live

From a communication perspective, these findings suggest that climate change is not just an environmental issue. It is increasingly affecting decisions about livelihoods, homes and community stability.

“Indians perceive climate change as a present-day reality”

India is among the world’s largest carbon emitters, yet its per-capita emissions remain far below those of most developed countries while it also faces significant climate impacts. How should we understand this imbalance?

Questions about responsibility and equity extend beyond the scope of this public-opinion survey.

What our findings show is that Indians perceive climate change as a present-day reality. Fifty-seven percent say people in India are already being harmed by global warming, 84% say global warming will harm people in India, and 85% say it will harm future generations.

Regardless of broader debates about responsibility, climate change is widely viewed by Indians as a significant and immediate challenge, and there is strong support for the government to pursue ambitious action plans on climate change and the clean-energy transition.

Your survey covers one of the world’s most diverse populations across 12 languages. What important regional differences lie beneath the national averages?

Absolutely. National averages are useful, but they never tell the entire story. India is extraordinarily diverse geographically, culturally, economically and politically. Many climate attitudes vary across regions and populations. India’s national averages hide significant regional differences.

Readers interested in these differences should explore the Yale Climate Opinion Maps for India, which provide state- and district-level estimates of climate beliefs, risk perceptions and policy support.

Those maps reveal substantial geographic variation that national averages can conceal, while also showing that concern about climate change and support for many climate policies are widespread across much of the country.

If this survey were conducted after an even more intense summer, would public concern rise further, or have we already reached a ceiling?

We cannot know without collecting the data. Public opinion often responds to highly visible and personally experienced events. However, concern is already extremely high in this survey. Ninety-two percent say global warming is at least somewhat important to them personally.

One interesting question for future research is how extreme weather events affect not just concern, but support for specific adaptation and mitigation policies.

Western Himalaya warming is accelerating faster than in the central and eastern Himalayas, with the region projected to face the greatest snow loss by 2100, a new climate study finds.

A new study combining 120 years of observed temperature records (1901–2020) with eight global climate models finds that the western Himalaya (Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh) is heating up more quickly than the central and eastern stretches of the range — a pattern that holds across every season and every emission scenario the researchers tested.

The imbalance shows up in multiple ways: winters are warming faster than springs, nights are warming faster than days, and by the end of the century, the western Himalaya stands to lose far more of its spring snow cover than the rest of the range, with the gap between low- and high-emission futures widening sharply the longer emissions stay high.

Western Himalaya warming is accelerating across seasons

A research study, Vulnerability of the Himalayan region under the climate change, published in the Journal of Earth System Science, led by the Department of Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics, Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, Ranchi, with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, and Ashoka University, assessed how temperature and snow are changing across three sectors of the Indian Himalayan range, and how far that change could go by 2100.

The researchers drew on two sources of evidence: 120 years of recorded ground-station temperatures across the region, from 1901 to 2020, and eight global climate models that were first validated against that historical record and then projected forward to the year 2100 under five emissions scenarios, ranging from steep near-term cuts to continued high fossil-fuel use. Two seasons were examined: winter, when snow accumulates, and the pre-monsoon spring months, when it melts.

The range is split into three stretches, studied separately: the western Himalaya (Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh), the central Himalaya (largely Uttarakhand), and the eastern Himalaya (Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and the wider North-East). Between them, they hold more than 15,000 glaciers and feed the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, the rivers that roughly 1.5 billion people depend on.

The warming has already reached about 1°C, and it is not evenly spread

Compared with the first three decades of the 1900s, all three stretches of the range had already warmed by close to 1°C in winter by the two decades to 2014: 1.06°C in the western Himalaya, 0.96°C in the central Himalaya and 1.09°C in the east. Springs had warmed by 1.08°C in the west, and 0.83°C in the centre and east. The warming has not arrived at a steady pace. Warmer-than-normal years have become the rule rather than the exception across all three stretches over the past 20–30 years, most of the change has come recently, the study said.

“The Himalaya is often discussed as a single system, but our observations and models both say otherwise. The western Himalaya consistently emerges as the most sensitive stretch — it warms the most and loses the most snow under every pathway we tested. That has direct consequences for the states that sit in it,” said Protyusha Mukhopadhyay, lead author, Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra.

Under high emissions, western Himalayan winters may warm by more than 7°C

The models show the same west-to-east pattern throughout the century. If emissions stay high, winters by 2081–2100 would be 7.18°C warmer in the western Himalaya, 6.71°C warmer in the central Himalaya and 5.82°C warmer in the east, compared with the early 1900s. Springs warm in the same order: 6.91°C, 6.41°C and 5.16°C.

“In the west and centre, winters are warming faster than springs. Less snow on the ground would mean a darker surface, which absorbs more heat, which melts more snow. It matters because winter is the season in which snow is supposed to build up; warmer winters mean less snow banked for the melt months that follow,” said Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay, corresponding author, Ashoka University.

Nights are warming faster than days

One of the clearest signals in the observational record is that minimum (night-time) temperatures are rising faster than maximum (daytime) temperatures across the western and central Himalaya. In the western Himalaya, winter minimum temperatures rose 1.23°C against 0.87°C for day temperatures; in spring, 1.25°C against 0.91°C. In the central Himalaya the gap is wider still in winter (1.20°C against 0.72°C).

The eastern Himalaya is the exception, where winter maximum temperatures rose more (1.19°C) than minimum (0.99°C). Warmer nights matter because they shorten the hours in which snow and ice can refreeze. That speeds up melting, and changes when the meltwater reaches the rivers below.

“Rising night-time temperatures are the quieter half of this story, and arguably the more consequential one. When the cold nights that let snowpack recover start disappearing, you change the melt cycle itself rather than how much snow falls, but when the water arrives downstream,” said Dr Swagata Payra, co-author, BIT Mesra.

Spring is where the snow is being lost

Across all three stretches of the range, spring sees greater snow loss than winter, and the western Himalaya loses by far the most. The study measures this as the weight of snow sitting on each square metre of ground. Over the western Himalaya, spring snow falls away steadily even on the lowest-emission path: by 24.2 kg per square metre by 2040, 27.4 kg by 2060 and 32 kg by the end of the century. On the highest-emission path, that end-of-century loss reaches 95.9 kg per square metre, enough to point towards an almost complete loss of seasonal snow in some pockets of the region, the authors said.

The central Himalaya loses less, though still a substantial amount: between 17.0 and 34.9 kg per square metre by the end of the century, depending on the emissions path. The eastern Himalaya loses the least, between 5.5 and 11.1 kg. Winter follows the same pattern. Western Himalayan snow loss by the end of the century ranges from 9.5 kg per square metre on the lowest-emission path to 53.2 kg on the highest.

The gap between emission pathways

Western Himalayan winters end the century 2.55°C warmer if emissions fall sharply, or 7.18°C warmer if they do not (a gap of 4.6°C). By 2100, a high-emission trajectory would strip roughly three times more spring snow from the region than a low-emission one, and more than five times more winter snow. The eight models largely agree on the next two to three decades. They diverge much more towards 2100 because how much the region warms by then depends on choices that have not yet been made.

“The models agree on where we are headed over the next two to three decades. What remains open is the second half of the century, and that is determined by emissions rather than by anything intrinsic to the mountains. A low-emission pathway does not stop the warming, but it changes its magnitude by several degrees,” said Mukhopadhyay

The eastern Himalaya warms the least of the three and loses the least snow, and its outlook varies the least across the emission paths. However, the study notes that the east has become a hotspot for glacial lake outburst floods that are sudden, destructive floods released when a lake dammed by glacial debris gives way. “That risk is expected to spread westward in the future, driven by retreating glaciers and the new lakes they leave behind, not by temperature alone,” said Protyusha.

The authors call for region-specific climate services and adaptation policy; enhanced monitoring that combines in-situ networks, satellite products and sustained high-resolution modelling to track glacier and snow dynamics in near real time; strengthened early-warning systems; sustainable water management; community-level resilience programmes; and transboundary cooperation. How water actually moves through these high mountains is still poorly captured by models, and more measurement on the ground is needed before it can be said with confidence how much ice and snow melts each year, and how much of that reaches the rivers below, the authors said.

A prolonged European drought combined with extreme heat is pushing major rivers to record lows, disrupting shipping and energy production while worsening crop losses and wildfire risks. As dry conditions spread north, Europe’s water, agriculture, ecosystems and public health systems are coming under increasing pressure.

A long period of low rainfall combined with extreme heatwaves has placed half of the European Union and the United Kingdom under drought conditions. A report published on August 12 by the European Commission Joint Research Centre and the European Drought Observatory reveals that nine percent of the region reached a critical alert level by late July.

Satellite data from Copernicus, the Earth monitoring program of the European Union, shows that severely dry soil is now damaging crops and plants across the continent. In its latest assessment, the observatory warned that “the drought has built up since early spring due to lower rainfall and higher than average temperatures, turning into fuel for devastating wildfires.”

European Drought Reaches Across the Continent

The lack of rain has driven four of Europe’s largest rivers—the Rhine, Danube, Loire, and Po—to dangerously low levels. Near Cologne, Germany, the Rhine fell to a fresh record low of 49 centimetres by mid-August, according to the Rhine Waterways and Shipping Authority — nearly 20 centimetres below the previous record of 68 centimetres set earlier in the summer, which had itself broken the prior all-time low recorded in 2018. Because large cargo boats need deeper water to float safely, operators have been forced to carry much lighter loads to avoid getting stuck on the riverbed, and in places river traffic has largely halted. Carrying smaller loads requires more trips, creating major shipping delays for important industrial materials across central Europe.

At the same time, low water levels and rising temperatures are creating a serious energy crisis across the continent. In France, power companies had to cut back nuclear energy production because river water became too warm to safely cool reactors without harming aquatic life. Hydroelectric power generation has also plunged across the Alps, northern Italy, and central-eastern Europe. Copernicus analysts noted that low river flows on the Danube are creating “serious operational challenges” for power plant cooling. In Italy’s Po Valley, the dried-out river basin has triggered a separate disaster: saltwater from the Adriatic Sea has flowed inland into depleted channels, ruining farmland soil and cutting off freshwater supplies for local crops.

Wildfires Burn Over 550,000 Hectares Across Europe

Dry plants and extreme heat have triggered widespread wildfires across the continent. According to August 11 data from the European Forest Fire Information System, 552,437 hectares of land have burned within the European Union since the start of the year, spread across 1,614 individual fires of 30 hectares or larger. Although this total remains below the 667,342 hectares burned by the same date in 2025 — a season that went on to become the worst on record for EU wildfires, with 1,034,552 hectares burned in total — it is significantly higher than the 20-year historical average.

Recent satellite data shows a clear shift: large wildfires are no longer staying just in southern hotspots like Spain and Greece. As dry weather pushes northward, fire risks are expanding into cooler regions, including northwestern France, southern Great Britain, the Alps, and the Balkans. Experts at the Joint Research Centre emphasized that “wildfire risk is no longer confined to southern Europe but is increasingly affecting wider parts of the continent under prolonged hot and dry conditions.”

Declining Harvests and Rising Health Risks

Continued heat and dry soil are dealing a heavy blow to European farmers. According to assessments by the European Joint Research Centre, crop yields across central and eastern Europe have dropped significantly. Production estimates for key spring and summer crops, such as grain maize and sunflowers, have fallen by six to seven percent. Winter crops have also suffered, with yield forecasts declining between one and four percent compared to earlier projections.

High temperatures are having a severe impact on human health as well. Monitoring data from public health agencies and the World Health Organization reveals a sharp surge in heat-related emergency admissions and deaths during extreme temperature episodes. Data compiled from national health agencies — including Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, which alone recorded an estimated 11,900 heat-linked deaths — put the region’s heat-related death toll above 25,000 as of early August, highlighting the severe human cost of this summer’s weather.

Seasonal Outlook and Emergency Response

Weather predictions indicate that dry conditions will continue through early autumn. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, drier and warmer weather is expected to persist across central-western Europe and southern Scandinavia through September. Climate experts also warn that a developing El Nino pattern could keep global temperatures higher than normal well into spring 2027. “Water resources, crops, energy systems, river transport, and ecosystems are all under growing pressure,” the report warned, with heatwave risks remaining high through August.

To coordinate emergency aid, the European Union activated its Civil Protection Mechanism. A dedicated fleet of 22 firefighting aircraft, 5 helicopters, and ground teams have been placed on standby across 12 countries. Meanwhile, the Copernicus satellite service has responded to more than 30 emergency requests since June, providing real-time mapping data to help local authorities track active fires and assess land damage on the ground.