Old temperature graphic falsely linked to recent heatwave in India
- Published on June 12, 2026 at 08:28
- 2 min read
- By Sammy HEUNG, AFP Hong Kong
As extreme heat engulfed India in May 2026 with temperatures hitting as high as 48.2C, social media users shared an old graphic falsely claiming that it showed the mercury had reached 60C in the country. The image was in fact made in 2022 and shows land surface temperatures (LST) -- which is different from air temperature, the metric used to measure heat felt by the human body.
"Stop complaining. India is currently running in high-temperature sterilisation mode," a traditional Chinese text overlay of an Instagram image shared on May 29, 2026, reads mockingly. "It's only May and the grey areas are already at 60C. They are being sous-vide cooked."
It includes infrared imagery using colour scales to represent LST in India, with parts of the country represented in black and grey, indicating a temperature of 50C or above.
It circulated after international air-quality monitoring platform AQI recorded that the top 45 hottest cities in the world were all in India at midday on May 27, all above 43C (archived link).
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned of the dangers of "extreme heat" after at least 16 people died of heatstroke in southern Telangana state the previous week.
Temperatures in New Delhi were 40C at midday on the day, while the city of Banda in Uttar Pradesh state 465 kilometres (289 miles) southeast of the Indian capital reached 48.2C earlier in the month -- 3.8C above normal.
Years of scientific research have found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
The country's highest officially recorded temperature is 51C, measured at Phalodi in Rajasthan in 2016.
Similar claims appeared on Threads, X, Sina and Hong Kong-based forum LIHKG, but the image is not related to the heatwave in 2026.
A reverse image search on Google found US news website Axios published the graphic attributed to the ADAM platform in a report on April 29, 2022 about a heatwave that swept across India and Pakistan at the time (archived link).
Temperatures in New Delhi hit 45C on the day, leading to power shortages as consumption for air conditioning and fans skyrocketed (archived link).
A spokesperson for ADAM -- which describes itself on its website as a tool to access global environmental data -- told AFP in an email on June 11, 2026, that the image represented LST measured on April 28, 2022.
Professor Leung Wing-mo, a meteorologist and former assistant director of the Hong Kong Observatory, said LST -- the measure given in the graphic -- is different from air temperature (archived link).
He told AFP that air temperature is the metric measured slightly above the ground -- usually 1.5 and two metres -- and refers to the air people are immediately exposed to, while LST is the temperature of the "skin" of the Earth's surface, such as the top of the grass, pavement, or canopy, and is measured via satellite thermal infrared radiation.
He went on to say if LST reaches 60C, the air temperature is likely to be "very high", but it can vary depending on conditions such as clouds, wind, relative humidity and rain, as well as the nature of the surface.
"During a sunny day, LST can exceed air temperature by 10 to 20C," he added.
AFP has previously tackled falsehoods about climate change.
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