As I write this my city Delhi is drowning. It started raining early this morning and within a few hours the city has come to a standstill. The television is showing scenes of traffic snarled up for hours, roads waterlogged and people and vehicles sunk deep in water and muck.

In the context of climate change and its impact on sectors like agriculture and health, it is important to examine the changes in the characteristics of temperature extremes of different intensities and duration. In this study, an India Meteorological Department gridded temperature dataset is used to examine the changes in the frequency of occurrence of extreme temperatures over India and its seven homogeneous regions during the period 1969–2005.