The heat of Delhi is the best conversation starter. Strangers instantly bond, sharing similar experiences of ordeals under the “unmerciful Delhi ka dhoop”.

With the new IIT research, people can break the ice now by commenting on the three hottest places in the city — the Sitaram Bazar, Connaught Place and Bhikaji Cama Place.

The Centre of Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi, has come out a research that tries to find out the Urban Heat Islands (UHI) in Delhi, where temperature is higher owing to urbanisation — dense buildings, heat radiating from a thousand parked cars and hot air pumped into the streets by the generators and air conditioners. The UHI is measured by the temperature difference from the place with the lowest temperature.

The research called DELHI-I (Delhi Experiments to Learn Heat  Island Intensity I) was conducted in May 2008 to understand the latest intensity and dynamics of heat islands or areas that get heated hue to urbanisation. The city was divided into 30 zones, where the temperature was measured for four days.

Commenting on the urban heat phenomenon, Prof Manju Mohan from IITD said with the development of satellite towns and unprecedented growth of cities, pockets of urban heat islands have developed.

“We can also term this phenomenon observed in the current context as ‘Urban Warming’,” she said.

In the three top spots, the UHI was found to be much higher than two spots that record the lowest UHI — the Sanjay Van-Hauz Khas Distt Park zone and Buddha Jayanti Park-Moti Nagar zone.

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