‘An extreme heat epidemic’

AP:

After three of Earth’s hottest days ever measured, the United Nations called for a flurry of efforts to try to reduce the human toll from soaring and searing temperatures, calling it “an extreme heat epidemic.”

“If there is one thing that unites our divided world, it’s that we’re all increasingly feeling the heat,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday at a news conference where he highlighted that Monday was the hottest day on record, surpassing the mark set just a day earlier. “Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere.”

Nearly half a million people a year die worldwide from heat related deaths, far more than other weather extremes such as hurricanes, and this is likely an underestimate, a new report by 10 UN agencies said.

“Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic – wilting under increasingly deadly heat waves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world,” Guterres said. “That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit and halfway to boiling.”

The European climate service Copernicus calculated that Tuesday’s global average temperature was 0.01 Celsius (0.01 Fahrenheit) lower than Monday’s all-time high of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.8 degrees Fahrenheit), which was .06 degrees Celsius hotter (0.1 degrees Fahrenheit) than Sunday.

All three days were hotter than Earth’s previous hottest day in 2023.

“We are not prepared,” the UN report said.

Guterres urged countries of the world to adopt several proposals aimed at reducing heat deaths, starting with help to cool and care for the most vulnerable people – the poor, elderly, young and sick.

The UN also called for better heat wave warnings, expanding “passive cooling”, improved urban design, stronger protections for outside workers, as well as greater efforts to tackle human-caused climate change that’s worsening weather extremes.

But officials said most work will have to be done by countries, with the UN offering aid and coordination, especially when it comes to beefing up weather warning systems.

If countries adopt the United Nations heat-fighting recommendations, “these measures could protect 3.5 billion people by 2050, while slashing emissions and saving consumers US$1 trillion a year,” Guterres said, citing a UN Environment Programme estimate.

HEAT-HEALTH WARNINGS

Better heat-health warning systems in 57 countries could save 98,314 lives per year, the report said, based on World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization estimates.

“Crippling heat is everywhere, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally,” Guterres said. “Extreme heat amplifies inequality, inflames food insecurity and pushes people further into poverty.”

More than 1,300 people died during this year’s annual Haj pilgrimage after walking in scorching heat.

Earlier this year, India’s prolonged heatwaves resulted in the deaths of at least 100 people. However, health experts say heat deaths are likely undercounted in India and potentially other countries.

Last year, the United States had its most recorded heat deaths in more than 80 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The death certificates of more than 2,300 people mentioned excessive heat, including 874 deaths in Arizona.

Deadly heat is not new, but scientists say it has been amplified in scale, frequency and duration with climate change.

Extreme heat, wildfires, floods, droughts and ever more fierce hurricanes are symptoms and “we need to fight the disease”, Guterres said. “The disease is the madness of incinerating our only home. The disease is the addiction to fossil fuels. The disease is climate inaction.”

“Many things are being done, but too little, too late,” he said. “The problem is that climate change is running faster than all the measures that are now being put in place to fight it.”

Before July 3, 2023, the hottest day measured by Copernicus was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on August 13, 2016. In the last 13 months that mark has now been beaten 59 times, according to Copernicus.

Humanity is now “operating in a world that is already much warmer than it was before,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said.