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Global warming is making dangerous hot weather more common, and more extreme, on every continent. A new study by researchers in Britain took a unique approach to identify the most dangerous places.
When the mercury rises, communities can suffer for many reasons: because no one checks on elderly people who live alone, because the poor don’t have air conditioning, because workers don’t have much choice but to work outside. The new study focuses on one simple reason that communities may be vulnerable to extreme heat waves: because they have never experienced one.
Whether it’s heat or floods or disease epidemics, the public is generally equipped only to handle the gravest disaster they have experienced in recent memory. After a disaster, people and policymakers are very aware of the risks and how to respond, said Dann Mitchell, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol in England and an author of the study. “And, as the years go by, you forget and don’t bother,” he said.
Dr. Mitchell and his colleagues studied daily maximum temperatures around the world between 1959 and 2021. They found that an area covering 31 percent of the Earth’s surface experienced extreme heat that, statistically, should not have happened. These places, according to research, are now prepared to some degree for the severe summer.
But there are still many areas that, by chance, have not experienced extreme heat. So he might not be ready.
According to the study, this includes economically developed places like Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, plus the Chinese region around Beijing. But it also includes developing countries like Afghanistan, Guatemala, Honduras and Papua New Guinea, which are more likely to lack the resources to maintain their people.
Other areas at particular risk include eastern Russia, northwestern Argentina and parts of northeastern Australia.
The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Is this important
In 2021, a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest broke local records by a staggering margin. Hundreds of people in Washington and Oregon may have died in the heat. Plants shriveled. Wildfire destroys the village of Lytton, British Columbia.
The new study shows that hot spells that fall outside the statistical range have occurred around the world over the past few decades. It shows that it could happen again, somewhere, though not all of it will look like the one in the Pacific Northwest.
Human-caused climate change isn’t helping. As the planet warms, the range of temperatures that can be experienced in many places is increasing. The sweltering heat, which at first was considered unusual, grew more and more intense.
But the weather is always different, and the most extraordinary events are those that, by definition, people do not experience very often. Society must remain “humble” about all the climate extremes that may occur, said Karen A. McKinnon, assistant professor of statistics and the environment at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“We’re often not even prepared for the basic level of variability,” said Dr. McKinnon, who was not involved in the new study.
Understand the bigger picture
The study only looked at the maximum temperature, which is not the only factor that can cause heat waves. Humidity is also important, as are warm overnight temperatures, which eliminate opportunities for people to cool off from oppressive daytime conditions.
In general, relief from the heat – in the form of, for example, green spaces or air conditioning – is less accessible to the poor than the rich.
Even in places that have experienced devastating heat waves, many residents still fail to prepare for future extremes because average conditions remain mild. In research published last year, Dr. McKinnon points out that, in the Pacific Northwest, extremely high temperatures occur more often than one would expect because of the region’s generally mild climate.
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