Abrupt changes in mean temperature over India during 1901–2010 RBHATLA 1,2, *, SHRUTI VERMA 1 ,SOUMIK GHOSH 1,3 and ANKITA GUPTA 4 1 Department of Geophysics, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. 2 DST-Mahamana Centre of Excellence in Climate Change Research, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. 3 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA. 4 Department of Botany (Section: Environmental Science), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. *Corresponding author. e-mail: rbhatla@bhu.ac.in MS received 24 July 2019; revised 20 February 2020; accepted 16 April 2020 Since eternity, the Earth’s temperature has varied or Cuctuated; it has its cooling and hot timing dependency on its orbital position as well as the isolation received from the Sun. The global climate continues to change rapidly compared to the speed of the natural variations in climate. Therefore, the spatially complete representations of surface climate are required for many purposes in applied sciences. But in recent centuries, the main matter of concern is that Earth’s normal temperature Cuctuation is being inCuenced by some external factors such as enhanced greenhouse gases because of extreme uses of fossil fuels, severe industrialization, advance urbanization, etc. This study presents a comprehensive surface temperature dataset of Climatic Research Unit (CRU) available since 1901 for India, which is used to document significant changes in Indian temperature over ten decades, during winter season (January and February), pre-monsoon (March–May), monsoon (June–September) and post-monsoon (October–December) to examine the patterns and possible eAects of global warming. A strong increasing pattern is observed with the fast growing of the development after 1950 which has shown nearly doubled in the last 50 yrs. The mean temperature during winter for the 2000s shows a consistent pattern of warming over the Himalayan region, northwestern and southern India, and a pattern of the warm- ing observed over northeastern India and extending southwestward across central India during post-monsoon. Keywords. Seasonal temperature; decadal; industrialization; temperature; CRU. 1. Introduction The variations in temperature can be linked to several atmospheric circulation features predomi- nantly with rainfall. Day-to-day increasing popu- lation and urbanization results in the increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission (Roser and Ortiz-Ospina 2018). Along with this critical factor, aerosol loading is supposed to aAect the day- and night-time temperature. The approximate reason behind the changes in temperature is directly linked with enhanced GHGs emission and the aerosol loading in the atmosphere. Although, it is very difBcult to establish a direct relationship between two such factors with temperature, numerous studies have been carried out on the long-term temperature variations along with the daily and extreme temperature changes. Some of J. Earth Syst. Sci. (2020)129 166 Ó Indian Academy of Sciences https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-020-01421-0