Rapid urbanization and climate change will be immensely transformative processes in the decades to come, particularly in many developing countries. It is essential to understand how their interaction will compound growing urban pressures. More specifically, how does climate change affect urbanization trends and city growth? This study considers the experience of India, employing a 40-year panel dataset from 1971 to 2011 covering 485 districts across the country to assess how changes in climatic moisture affect urbanization, urban population growth, and rural population growth at the district level. The findings suggest that drying leads to more rapid growth in the urban population share, which is consistent with the literature on climate change acting as a “push” factor for urbanization. However, this paper also finds that changes in climatic moisture had a statistically insignificant effect on a district’s total urban population growth; instead, drying contributes to slower rural population growth. This suggests that increases in urban share growth in drying districts may be attributable, in part, to stagnating rural growth, potentially driven by rural out-migration. Second, this study employs another 40-year panel dataset covering 2222 urban centers in India to assess the impact of changes in climatic moisture on city population growth. The findings suggest that cities located in districts that experienced an increase in moisture saw more rapid growth than cities located in districts that experienced drying. Taken together, these results suggest that drying districts may indeed urbanize more rapidly, but districts experiencing increases in climatic moisture may face more intense population pressures.