New Delhi: India will launch its own composite index next year to quantify the impact of heat on its population and generate impact-based heat wave alerts for specific locations, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said.

The IMD began issuing an experimental heat index for different parts of the country last week, taking into account air temperature and relative humidity to determine how hot it really feels.

“The heat index is an experimental product. It is not validated and we have mentioned that (on the IMD’s website) too. We are coming up with our own system now, a multi-parameter product called ‘heat hazard score’. We hope that it will be better than the others,” Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General of Meteorology, IMD, told PTI.

Press Trust of India