The climate crisis is no longer a problem for the future. In many parts of the world, it has already begun.

Millions of people live in extreme temperatures and face increasing threats of floods or wildfires. Here, five people explain how extreme temperatures have changed their lives.

Shakeela Bano often spreads her bedding on the roof of their one-story house in India. Some nights are too hot to sleep indoors. The roof may be too hot to walk. "It's very difficult," she said. "We have a lot of sleepless nights."

Shakeela lives in a windowless room in Ahmedabad with her husband, daughter and three grandsons. They only have a ceiling fan to keep cool.

Climate change means that many cities in India are now reaching 50 degrees Celsius. Densely populated built-up areas are particularly affected by the urban heat island effect. Materials such as concrete absorb heat and emit heat, which pushes up the temperature. There is no chance to breathe at night, because it actually gets hotter.

In a family like Shakira, the temperature now reaches 46 degrees Celsius. She was dizzy in the heat. Her grandchildren suffer from skin rash, heatstroke and diarrhea.

Traditional methods of keeping cool, such as drinking buttermilk and lemonade, are no longer effective. Instead, they borrowed money to paint the roof of their home white. The white surface reflects more sunlight, and a layer of white paint on the roof can lower the internal temperature by 3-4 degrees.

For Shakira, the difference is huge; the room is cooler and the children sleep better. "He couldn't sleep all afternoon," she said, pointing to her sleeping grandson. "Now he can leave peacefully."

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"I come from a hot place," Sidi Fadoua said. However, the heat in northern Mauritania in West Africa is now preventing many people from living and working. He said that the heat here is not normal heat. "It's like fire."

Xidi, 44, lives in a small village near the edge of the Sahara Desert. He works as a salt miner in a nearby apartment. This task is arduous, and as the region heats up due to climate change, it becomes more and more difficult. "We can't stand the temperature," he said. "We are not machines."

In order to avoid temperatures exceeding 45C in summer, Sidi has started to work at night.

The employment prospects are worrying. Those who once lived by raising livestock can no longer do this-there are no plants for sheep and goats to graze.

Therefore, like more and more neighbors, Sidi plans to move to the coastal city of Nouadhibou, where the sea breeze keeps the city cool. Locals can take one of the longest trains in the world and hitchhike there to transport iron ore from nearby mines to the coast.

"People are moving away from here," Sidi explained. "They can't stand the heat anymore." The 20-hour drive is dangerous. Locals can sit on the top of the carriage, where they will be exposed to heat and sunlight during the day, and then the temperature will drop to near freezing at night.

In Nouadhibou, he hopes to find a job in the fishing industry. The breeze may bring respite, but as more and more people flee the desert heat, job opportunities are getting harder and harder to find. Sidi is still hopeful.

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More than thirty years ago, Patrick Michell, the aboriginal chief of Kanaka Bar, first noticed the worrying changes in the forest near his protected area in British Columbia, Canada. The water in the river became less and the mushrooms stopped growing.

This summer, his worries came true. A heat wave swept North America. On June 29, his hometown of Litton broke the record, reaching 49.6C. The next day, his wife sent him a photo with a thermometer reading 53C. An hour later, his town caught fire.

His eight-month-old daughter Serena scrambled to load her baby and pets into the car: "We left with our clothes on our back. The flame is three stories high and is right next to us."

Patrick ran back to see if he could save the house. He grew up in the process of dealing with wildfires. But just like the climate, the fire has also changed. "These are no longer wildfires, they are hell," he said. "How do you release hellfire?"

Despite the poor family situation, Patrick sees what happened as an opportunity: "We can rebuild Litton for the next 100 years. This is daunting, but I have this optimism in my heart."

"When I was a kid, the weather was not like this," said Joey, who lives in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. This area is one of the most polluted areas on the planet, and hotter days and nights are increasing.

Joey feeds her family by using the heat generated by a gas torch to dry tapioca flour and sell it in the local market. "My hair is short," Joey explained, "because if I have long hair, if the flare changes direction or explodes, my head will be burned."

But flares are part of the problem. Oil companies use them to burn natural gas released from the ground while drilling for oil. The flares rise 6 million (20 feet) high and are an important source of global carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change.

Climate change has had a devastating effect here, turning the fertile land in the north into a desert, and flooding in the south. People don't remember this extreme weather when they grow up.

"Most people here don't have enough information to explain why the climate is changing so fast," Joey said. "But we are skeptical about the uninterrupted flare." She hopes the government will ban gas burning, even if she relies on it to feed her family.

Almost no oil wealth is reinvested in Nigeria, where 98 million people live in poverty. This includes Joey and her family. In five days of work, they made a profit of 4 pounds.

She is not optimistic about the future. "I think life on [earth] is now coming to an end."

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Six years ago, Om Naief started planting trees in a desert near the highway. As a retired civil servant in Kuwait, she is worried about increasingly severe summer temperatures and worsening sandstorms.

"I have talked with some officials. They all said it is impossible to grow anything in the sand," she said. "They said this land is sandy and the temperature is too high. I want to do something that surprises everyone."

Om lives in the Middle East, where the rate of warming is faster than most parts of the world. Kuwait is moving towards intolerable temperatures-it often exceeds 50 degrees Celsius. Some forecasts indicate that the average temperature will rise by 4 degrees Celsius by 2050. However, Kuwait’s economy is dominated by fossil fuel exports.

The two patches planted by Om are modest, but they are purposeful. "Trees can resist dust, eliminate pollution, purify the air and lower the temperature," she said. Hedgehogs and spiny-tailed lizards now visit the site. "There is fresh water and shade. This is a beautiful thing."

Some Kuwaiti people are now calling on the government to plant large-scale green belts. Their common hope is that Kuwait is ready to fight the climate crisis. Om said they must protect this land and not let it dry out.

"This heat is abnormal," Om concluded. "This is the land of our ancestors. We must give it back because it gave us a lot."

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The BBC News Arabic documentary team has filmed the series Life at 50C in 10 extremely hot locations in the past year to show how climate change and rising temperatures affect the lives of people around the world. Watch the full series here.

Heat swept Australia

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Mexico's water struggle

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Traffic police working at a high temperature of 50 degrees

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Top image from Getty Images. The visualization of climate stripes was provided by Professor Ed Hawkins and the University of Reading.

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