Extreme heat is killing more people – and the worst is yet to come
The world is witnessing temperatures never experienced in recorded history. Adaptation to extreme heat is essential if cities and countries are to protect their populations.
There is no longer an excuse to be unprepared for the deadliness of extreme heat. The American Southwest is facing record stretches of days over 110 degrees, and Florida has measured sea-surface temperatures nearing 100. On July 6, Algeria recorded the highest nighttime low temperature in African history – just over 103 degrees. A powerful heat dome has descended on Europe, bringing land surface temperatures to 140 degrees in Spain.
And among the most important signs of extreme weather is the rising death rate. The future of climate change is here, bringing escalating mortality with it.
Yet a wave of new studies indicates that cities and nations are as unprepared as ever. A report released in June by Santé Publique France, the country’s chief public health agency, documents steadily rising heat mortality since 2014. The study noted more than 32,000 excess deaths – that is, deaths above the expected number for any given period – were attributable to extreme heat from 2014 to 2022, with nearly 7,000 deaths last year.
Extreme heat kills thousands of people each year
A recent analysis in The Lancet Planetary Health indicates that every year since 2000, an average of 20,000 people have died from extreme heat in European cities. And a new study in Nature Medicine reports that more than 61,000 Europeans died from extreme heat in summer 2022. That marks the deadliest summer since the devastating heat waves of 2003 in Europe caused 70,000 excess deaths.
When deadly heat struck in 2003, authorities could claim to be surprised. In France in particular, public health agencies and hospitals were caught off guard and found themselves understaffed due to the August vacation period when the worst of the heat struck.
By contrast, this year's extreme heat is only the latest in a stretch of increasingly hot summers since 2014. Summer heat has soared to the extent that broken records are less significant than the constant burden of living with oppressive temperatures, which have caused heat deaths to become such a consistent part of summer that they no longer appear as outliers. If 2003's high mortality came as a shock, last year's deaths were to be expected.
In response to the catastrophic experience of 2003, European nations and cities have adopted heat adaptation plans. These include acute emergency response protocols, awareness campaigns, alert systems and broader climate mitigation strategies such as traffic reduction programs and green building incentives. Even so, the staggering death toll from 2022 indicates that these plans are not working.
Will heat wave impact politics?Climate change isn't a top issue for Democrats or Republicans. Record heat should change that.
COVID pandemic likely obscured true number of heat-related deaths
This news is terrible, as it suggests that efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change are failing. Unfortunately, the figures are likely worse than they appear. The COVID-19 pandemic has likely minimized these numbers, masking the true toll of deadly heat reflected in these studies.
This is important to understand because while the 61,000 deaths of 2022 are almost unimaginable, the effects of the pandemic mean that they underrepresent the dangers of extreme heat.
COVID-19 and extreme heat intersect in important ways. Prevention strategies for each are diametrically opposed. Health authorities advised those at risk for COVID-19 infection to isolate in their homes, but solitude exacerbates risk for dying from extreme heat. During heat waves, the best advice remains to seek cool environments, including movie theaters, grocery stores and shopping centers – crowded settings that elevated the risk of infection during the pandemic.
COVID-19 and extreme heat pose significant danger to the same people. Older populations, people with disabilities and those with certain comorbidities are at increased risk for COVID-19 and heat mortality, so they are torn when faced with the choice of isolating in sweltering apartments or facing infection in a crowded store.
A letter from Earth:I'm giving you record temperatures and wild floods. TAKE A HINT!!
The world is witnessing temperatures never experienced in recorded history. Adaptation to extreme heat is essential if cities and countries are to protect their populations.
The tens of thousands of recent deaths from extreme heat demonstrate that the measures adopted have been minimally effective in reducing the lethal effects of climate change.
Taking the larger picture of the pandemic’s influences on those figures into account, however, indicates that the outlook is far more concerning. Not only have these measures failed to provide significant protection, but the radical acceleration of warming also has dramatically outpaced human efforts to adapt to it.
As the pandemic continues to recede, the world is likely to see extreme heat mortality surge in its wake.
Richard C. Keller is a professor and chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of "Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003."