Climate change hits home as Egypt swelters in never-ending summer

Summer in Egypt was so hot this year that the managers of a 40-hectare orchard in the Nile Delta had to wrap each fruit on its mango trees with paper to shield them from the heat.

They also coated the orchard's oranges with kaolin, a type of clay, in the agricultural equivalent of applying sunblock to humans, said Laila Aly, one of the orchard's managers and a German-trained agronomist.

A spray system was also installed to cool the trees on particularly hot days in a summer now labelled by scientists as the hottest on record, she told The National.

Now in mid-November, summer and its unforgiving near-daily temperatures of 40ºC and above should be long gone.

Not quite.

Temperatures have remained at 30ºC and above since October, nearly 10ºC above the norm for this time of year five decades ago – and even more recently.