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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ESSDD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Earth System Science Data Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ESSDD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">1866-3591</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/essd-2026-103</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Daily Human Thermal Index Dataset for India (HiTIC-India) at 1-km Spatial Resolution (2003&amp;ndash;2020)</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Gouda</surname>
<given-names>Subhransu Sekhar</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dubey</surname>
<given-names>Saket</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kankanala</surname>
<given-names>Vrinda</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Gera</surname>
<given-names>Jasinta</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Bharatha</surname>
<given-names>Sukeerthi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Infrastructure, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar 752050, India</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>01</day>
<month>04</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>29</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Subhransu Sekhar Gouda et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-103/">This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-103/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-103/essd-2026-103.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-103/essd-2026-103.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Human exposure to extreme heat and cold poses increasing risks to public health, labour productivity, and urban sustainability, particularly in densely populated and climate-sensitive regions such as India. Human-perceived temperature (HPT) indices provide a more realistic measure of thermal stress than air temperature alone by integrating multiple meteorological factors. Here, we present the Human Thermal Index Collection for India (HiTIC-India), a high-resolution daily gridded dataset comprising twelve widely used HPT indices at 1 km spatial resolution for 2003&amp;ndash;2020. The indices are initially derived from ERA5-based meteorological data and then downscaled using a Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) framework. This downscaling incorporates satellite-derived land surface temperature, precipitable water vapour, population density, and topographic variables (slope, elevation and aspect) to generate spatially continuous predictions at 1 km resolution. Model valuation shows high prediction accuracy across all indices, with a mean root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 3.12 &amp;deg;C, a coefficient of determination (R&amp;sup2;) of 0.89, and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 2.39 &amp;deg;C. The resulting dataset significantly captures local-scale variability in heat and cold stress across India&amp;rsquo;s diverse climatic and physiographic zones. HiTIC-India also supports numerous applications, including public health risk evaluation, urban heat exposure analysis, labour productivity assessment, and climate adaptation and mitigation planning. By providing consistent daily HPT datasets, HiTIC-India provides a comprehensive, high-resolution, and publicly accessible resource for climate&amp;ndash;health research and evidence-based decision-making under warming climate.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="29"/></counts>
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