The Climate Impact Lab’s analysis compares expected temperatures during the El Niño months with the 1996‑2025 average, arriving at the Indian death toll estimate. The same model forecasts 451,000 extra heat‑related deaths worldwide in the first six months of the event, including 239,000 in the September‑February window.
Regional breakdowns show the highest projected losses in the Sahel (66,800 deaths), followed by Indonesia (19,300), a combined 19,400 across the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, and 13,300 in Brazil. The lab’s co‑founder Michael Greenstone said the findings give decision‑makers a clear view of where emergency actions can save “tens of thousands of lives in the coming months.”
The report labels the current phenomenon a “Super El Niño,” an informal term for an exceptionally strong El Niño. Forecasts earlier in September indicated a greater than 90 % chance of a very strong El Niño persisting through the northern‑hemisphere autumn and winter, with sea‑surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific already more than 3 °C above normal.
In India, the southwest monsoon is entering its withdrawal phase after a season of deficient rainfall. As of September 22, 2026, national rainfall was about 15 % below normal, with larger shortfalls in the south and east. The heat surge is also straining the power grid; nearly 40 % of coal‑fired plants reported critically low fuel stocks amid soaring electricity demand.
The lab’s mortality estimate rests on applying previously derived temperature‑mortality relationships across 24,378 regions to seasonal temperature forecasts, accounting for local climate, vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Full methodological details are slated for a forthcoming peer‑reviewed paper, and the report does not disclose the exact coefficients linking temperature rise to death counts.
Previous research supports a link between extreme heat and mortality. A 2024 multi‑city study found heatwaves raised all‑cause mortality across ten Indian cities, while a global analysis estimated India accounted for roughly 20.7 % of heatwave‑related excess deaths between 1990 and 2019.
Earlier this week, 188 Indian scientists and ecologists signed a statement urging expanded monitoring of the El Niño’s impacts on the country’s marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. The group called for immediate mobilisation of resources to design, deploy and evaluate preparation tools that could save lives in the years ahead.