The death toll due to heat wave has gone up to 87, according to a report.
A total of 45 people have died in the last 36 hours.
According to the Times of India, 19 more people died of suspected heatstroke in western Odisha, 16 in Uttar Pradesh, while five people succumbed in Bihar, four in Rajasthan and one in Punjab.
Heat wave to severe heat wave conditions prevailed over many parts of Haryana, Chandigarh-Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh; in some parts of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and in isolated pockets of Uttarakhand, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
Yesterday (Friday), the highest maximum temperature of 48.2°C was reported at Kanpur (West Uttar Pradesh) over the country.
Experts from the IMD have found that the automatic weather station (AWS) sensor at Mungeshpur was reporting temperatures “about 3 degrees Celsius higher than the maximum temperature reported by the standard instrument,” the report said.
Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju shared a draft report on the Mungeshpur incident, which said the maximum temperature recorded by the AWS was three degrees higher than the standard instruments.
The report recommended that the surface instrument division at IMD Pune may examine and calibrate the AWS temperature sensors at periodic intervals of all the AWS.
It also recommended that a Factory Acceptance Test should be carried out in different temperatures before the installation of an AWS and called for routine maintenance of such devices installed across the country in a planned manner.
The IMD said AWS reading at Mungeshpur was an outlier compared to the temperature measured by other AWS and manual observatories in Delhi.
"Also, it exceeded the earlier all-time highest maximum temperature of 48.4 degrees Celsius at Palam on May 26, 1998," the weather office said.
On Friday, the IMD had said that a faulty sensor had led to higher temperature readings at the AWS installed by the Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth in Nagpur.
The maximum temperature in Delhi NCR is being monitored through five surface observatories and automatic weather stations.
The observations of maximum temperature on May 29 were between 45.2 to 49.1 degrees Celsius except the AWS installed at Mungeshpur, which reported a maximum temperature of 52.9 degrees Celsius.
As of January this year, more than 800 AWS have been deployed across the country for weather observations.
(With inputs from PTI)