I have spent my entire life in Kathmandu. I more or less know how the seasons work here. But, this October has been unlike any other. It has been very hot and mosquitos are still buzzing.
Yes, I do consume a lot of Climate Change information and that may have influenced my outlook towards this year. But still, it’s mid-October and I am sweating and slapping myself! Didn’t I wear a sweater this time around last year? Weren’t the mosquitos gone along with the monsoon?
I want to know whether it’s always been this way and I have been exaggerating or is there something else to it!
A quick search on Google has revealed the current temperature (the time of this writing) of Kathmandu to be 29 °C.
At 9 AM this morning it was 31 °C.
I checked on a historical dataset tool and it showed that the temperature at 9:35 AM in October 13, 2010 was 23 °C and the weather was foggy. It showed the temperature at the same date and time to be 22 °C and 20 °C and foggy in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
Further, at 9:35 in the morning in the 13th of October it showed:
19 °C and foggy in 2013
19 °C and foggy in 2014
21 °C and foggy in 2015
~ 21 °C with broken clouds in 2016
25 °C with scattered clouds in 2017
20 °C with broken cloud in 2018
21 °C with scattered clouds in 2019
25 °C with broken clouds in 2020
25 °C with passing clouds in 2021
It has been more or less around the same temperature at around 9 in the morning as per this tool.
I clearly was stupid to be wearing a sweater this time last year.
I then cross-checked with this tool. It showed weather from the TIA radar. It showed:
At 9:35 in the morning in the 13th of October:
79 °F or 26.1111 °C and partly cloudy in 2010
77 °F or 25 °C and partly cloudy in 2011
73 °F or 22.7778 °C and fair in 2012
66 °F or 18.8889 °C and cloudy in 2013
64 °F or 17.7778 °C and light rain in 2014
72 °F or 22.2222 °C and mostly cloudy in 2015
77 °F or 25 °C with mostly cloudy in 2016
79 °F or 26.1111 °C with partly cloudy in 2017
75 °F or 23.8889 °C and fair in 2018
75 ° F or 23.8889 °C and partly cloudy in 2019
79 ° F or 26.1111 °C with light rain in 2020
84 ° F or 28.8889 °C and fair in 2021
This tool clearly shows that the temperature has been the highest in 2021 within the last 11 years.
Both tools show that 2010, 2011, 2016, 2017 and 2020 have been the warmest.
For context,
9:35 AM temperature in Kathmandu:
in 2000 was 79 ° F / 26.1111 ° C and partly cloudy
77 ° F/ 25 ° C in 2002 and partly cloudy
79 ° F / 26.1111 ° C and partly cloudy at around 8:35-10:15 AM in 2004
81 ° F / 27.2222 ° C and fair at 9:35 AM in 2005
81 ° F / 27.2222 ° C and partly cloudy in 2008
This looks something like this:
I am unsure of the reliability of the data available. But the rise in temperature I felt subjectively seems to be justified.
We saw data of two different sources and the curve more or less looks the same.
