If the soaring mercury has left humans gasping for breath, animals are suffering no less.

The United States has been resisting European calls for industrialized nations to target an upper limit for global warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), according to a draft summit text.

LUCKNOW: As dry hot westerly winds coming from deserts of Rajasthan continued to lash north India, the state was gripped by a severe heat wave.

Almost all the districts of UP recorded hottest day of this summer on Monday.

BHUBANESWAR: With monsoon playing truant and hot dry winds from the desert plains fuelling the summer heat, Bhubaneswar turned into a burning cauldron on Monday recording 44.6 degrees Celsius, highest for the season and 10 degrees above normal. Such was the condition that denizens complained of burning sensation during the peak hours. Only a day before, Bhubaneswar recorded 43 degrees Celsius.

There have been several air circulation disturbances in the recent past. Heat waves have scorched Orissa and West Bengal, while cyclonic storms took shape in the Bay of Bengal. Scientists pore over data to explain the unusual weather, writes Archita Bhatta

Climate change could lead to a rise in average summer temperatures in parts of Britain that is nearly double the level which the European Union and others say is dangerous, a study said on Thursday.

Climate change has already caused "visible impacts" in the United States and poses particular risks to the U.S. agriculture and energy industries, a new government report said on Tuesday.

There is "scarcely an instrument of U.S. foreign policy" that was not vulnerable to climate change, which scientists say will raise sea levels by melting glaciers and ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, Kerry, a Democrat, said at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting.

Japan should shun a "politically inexplicable" option of a rise in greenhouse gas emissions when it sets a 2020 target in coming days, the U.N.'s top climate change official said on Wednesday.