People stay indoors during India's hottest day ever

New Delhi: People weren't frying eggs on the sidewalks in Phalodi during India's hottest day ever – it was so hot that many did not venture out at all.

Heat is a familiar part of life in Phalodi, in the deserts of Rajasthan, so residents were following a familiar drill even before temperatures soared to 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit (51 degrees Celsius) on Thursday: When the heat comes, stay indoors, chug buttermilk and, if you must go out, cover your head and pray for shade. It is a drill that may prove ever more necessary if temperatures continue to rise.

Dr Bhani Ram Paliwal​, the principal medical officer at a government hospital in Phalodi, could not remember a day like Thursday in 15 years of working there. Roughly 500 patients, almost double the average number, visited his outpatient department, many with complaints of diarrhoea and fever.

"It was like heatwaves were coming out of a clay oven," he said.

 Scientists say that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high pace, average global temperatures could rise by more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

"Climate change is obviously going to be playing a role," said Andrew Robertson, a senior research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.

Read this story in today’s Melbourne Age - “'Like heatwaves were coming out of a clay oven': temperature sets record in India.”