Extreme heat in India and Pakistan: Protect yourself if you can

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The air shimmers with heat and sand: In the city of Allahabad in northern India, temperatures are currently rising to more than 40 degrees

Photo: Sanjay Kanojia / AFP

They wear long, light, thin clothes and try to shade themselves with towels and umbrellas.

They buy water, some with refreshing lemon or mango, which is currently being sold at small stands all over India's capital, New Delhi.

Or they quench their thirst with water from clay pots that residents have set up in the streets for passers-by to see.

People in India and Pakistan are suffering from an early and severe heatwave.

Temperatures in large parts of the region have climbed well over 40 degrees - and could even rise.

The weather services of the two neighboring countries have issued heat warnings.

India has already experienced the hottest March since weather records began 122 years ago.

Now in New Delhi, temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius for several days and are expected to hover around 44 degrees Celsius by Sunday - with the summer heat still to come before cooling monsoon rains arrive in June.

Such heat is generally not unusual in South Asia.

But right now it's hitting the region much earlier than usual.

This heat wave is a warning sign for what is to come in May and June, says Director Dileep Mavalankar of the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar.

According to an analysis by Mariam Zachariah and Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, extreme heat is occurring more frequently in India than before as a result of climate change.

"Before the rise in global temperatures, we would have experienced the heat India experienced this month about once in 50 years," says Mariam Zachariah.

'Now such an event occurs much more frequently - about every four years.

And as long as the emission of greenhouse gases is not stopped, such an event will occur more often.«

See how people are dealing with the extreme temperatures here:

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