Shocking new research from India linked the high rate of suicide among farmers there to climate change and rising temperatures.

Researcher Tamma A Carleton studied suicide rates and daily temperatures over 47 years and found that fluctuations in climate, particularly temperature, significantly influence suicide rates.

Higher temperatures reduce crop yield and therefore income for farmers.

For temperatures above 20°C, a 1°C increase in temperature in a single day causes around 70 suicides.

Carleton, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that global warming over the last 30 years has been responsible for 59,300 suicides in India. More than 300,000 Indian farmers and agricultural workers have killed themselves since 1995.

Most of the farmer suicides are linked to debt and crop losses, while many are smallholders with less than five acres of land.

Farmers protesting in New Delhi have brought skulls of farmers who they say died by suicide when their crops were hit by drought.