What is India’s spring season? According to a glossary published by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), there is no official spring season in India, with the March-May period simply called the pre-monsoon season. However, since winter ends in February officially and March 1 is generally considered the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, March can also be considered India’s spring.

How are temperatures over India in the 2024 spring season? Average temperatures for India in March so far suggest that the 2024 spring season is somewhat cooler than normal. According to the gridded dataset of IMD, India’s average maximum for the March 1-March 18 period was 0.90°C cooler than the 1981-2010 average, considered the normal for temperature by IMD. Similarly, the average minimum for this 18-day period was 0.31°C cooler than normal.

To be sure, the cooling seen in the average for March so far largely took place in the first 10 days of the month. After March 10, both the maximum and minimum have largely been within 0.5°C of normal.

Just as daily temperature shows different degrees of cooling and warming on different days this spring, there are also regional variations. Geographically, only around 56% of India’s area has experienced a normal or cooler-than-normal average maximum in the spring so far. As the accompanying map shows, this area is limited to the northern half of the country. For peninsular India and large parts of north-eastern India, maximums have been above normal on average in the spring so far.

The average minimum for the spring so far is normal or below normal over a relatively smaller area compared to the average maximum: only 45% of India’s area. However, the area that has experienced cooler than normal minimum has a rough coincidence with the area that has experienced cooler than normal maximum. As the accompanying map shows, cooler than normal minimums have also been experienced in northern and western regions and warmer than normal minimums in the southern and eastern regions.

These geographic trends seen in spring temperatures this year also have a larger point. In the past decade (2014 to 2023), the average minimum temperature in this part of March has been normal or cooler than normal over a smaller area than the average maximum, somewhat like in 2024. There are also commonalities in the area that has experienced warming. The northeastern region and the southern tip of the Indian peninsula have experienced both a warmer-than-normal maximum and a warmer-than-normal minimum in the past decade. This is also how these regions have experienced the March so far in 2024.

However, as the maps above show, the 2024 spring does appear to be more benign towards north-western India than it has been in the past decade. Northwestern India tended to experience warmer than normal maximums and minimums in this part of March in the past decade. This hasn’t been the case on average this year. To be sure, both maximums and minimums are expected to be warmer than normal in the northern half of India in the week starting March 22, according to IMD's extended range forecast.

Abhishek Jha, a data journalist, takes a weekly look at the weather and what's in store for us.