India, Jan. 1 -- Northern India woke up to either cloudy skies or fog on the morning of December 31, which could mean a cool end to 2025 for the region. This has one parallel with the earth on average. Aided by relative cooling in December, 2025 is now likely to end up only third warmest in more than half the datasets that track global temperature. To be sure, the difference with 2023 - ranked second warmest - is likely to be marginal. In all scenarios, global warming relative to the pre-industrial average is likely to be very close to 1.5degC in 2025, a level expected to lead to catastrophic climate change if it persists for a long time.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Hindustan Times....