India is running out of water, fast

At least 21 cities in India, including capital New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting around 100 million people.

Water levels in Chennai's main reservoirs have fallen
to one of the lowest levels in 70 years, according
to Indian media reports.

India's news network NDTV said 40 percent of India's population will have no access to drinking water by 2030, according to a report by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) - the country's principal planning organisation. 

One of the worrying predictions of climate change has been a weakening monsoon season in South Asia. For the last five years, rainfall in the region has been below average, with 2015 being the worst at 86 percent.

Read the story from Al Jazeera and agencies - “India is running out of water, fast.”

India's heatwave

New Delhi recorded its highest ever temperature of 48 degrees. 

An Indian resident takes it easy as he tries to escape the heat.

This is the darker side of an Indian summer.

Eleven of India's 15 warmest years have taken place since 2014.

The extreme heat has been blamed for deaths, especially amongst the poorest segments of the population, many of whom work outdoors and don't have the means or the right to take time off from their labour.

Listen to the ABC's South Asia Correspondent: Siobhan Heanue as she talks about “India’s heatwave”.

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.”

India experiencing its own 'Black Saturday' prelude

V

ictoria’s “Black Saturday” bushfires in 2009 killed 173 people and destroyed 2029 homes.

The media focus, subsequently, was relentless with much being made of 173 people who died in the fearsome fires.

However, what went largely unnoticed by most was that nearly three times that many died in the oppressive heat in the week leading up to the first.

Yes, the fires were deadly and serious, but in the simple number of deaths, the extreme heat of the previous week was even more deadly and serious.

India, according to Sky News is now wrestling with something similar, at least from the point of view of extreme temperature.

Sky News reports: “At least 800 people have died in a major heatwave across India, melting roads in New Delhi as temperatures neared 50C.

“Hospitals are on alert to treat victims of heatstroke and authorities advise people to stay indoors with no end in sight to the searing conditions.

“In the worst-hit state of Andhra Pradesh, in the south, 551 people have died in the last week as temperatures hit 47C on Monday.”

Read the story - “India heatwave kills 800 as roads melt”.