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| Dry, heat-stressed farmland. Researchers project extra heat-related deaths in India and across the Global South during the current Super El Niño. (Representative image) |
New Dehli - India could record about 15,800 additional heat-related deaths between September 2026 and February 2027 compared with a normal year, according to a new assessment by the Climate Impact Lab, placing the country fourth among those expected to see the largest excess toll over the six-month period.
Nearly half of those projected deaths in India are expected between December and February, the report said. Researchers estimated 7,400 additional heat-related deaths in that three-month window and warned that the impact may not end in February, as heat-related mortality is expected to rise again once India’s summer begins.
The laboratory attributed the extra risk to the current “Super El Niño,” which began in June and is helping drive unusually high temperatures worldwide. Global land temperatures are expected to run about 1.2°C above normal in the coming months, according to the report.
The estimates are projections of additional deaths linked to extra heat, not a count of deaths already recorded. The Climate Impact Lab said 451,000 people could die from extreme heat during the first half of the current El Niño compared with a typical year. Over the next six months, it projected about 239,000 additional heat-related deaths worldwide, plus or minus 11,000. If El Niño persists through spring 2027, the laboratory said, those figures could rise further.
Countries in the Global South are expected to bear much of the burden. The Sahel is projected to see 66,800 additional heat-related deaths between September and February, including 31,400 in Nigeria, 17,500 in Sudan, 10,000 in Niger and 8,000 in Chad. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia together are projected to see 19,400 additional deaths, while Indonesia is projected to see 19,300. Brazil is projected to see 13,300.
“We have long been able to predict the impacts of temperatures on crops, and now we can predict their impact on the worst outcome—death. The result is that we now can estimate that 451,000 people may die in the coming months due to El Niño,” said Michael Greenstone, a co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. “This report allows decision makers to see exactly where emergency actions can be taken now to save tens of thousands of lives in the coming months.”
The laboratory described the present stretch of unusually high temperatures as a “postcard from the future,” arguing that conditions expected during this El Niño resemble those climate change could make more common about 20 years from now.
The report said there is still time to limit the number of deaths through early warning systems, cooling centres, hydration stations, worker protections and stronger health services. It also noted that some of those measures have been studied in only a limited number of places. For India, the projected 15,800 additional deaths between September and February, the authors said, underline the need to prepare before the country’s hotter months begin.