“There have always been heat waves, which usually occur in July or August, cover a limited area and disappear in a few days,” explain researchers Susan Joy Hassol and Michael E. Mann.
Still, looking at this week’s national heatmap can’t make anyone optimistic about the climate crisis, except for the most deniable, they added.
Officials say more than 100 million Americans are facing sweltering heat, so “it’s time to sound the alarm bell again, but louder and with greater urgency,” they warned in an article published in The Hill.
For both experts, the path to stabilizing temperatures below the internationally agreed values is over.
According to Hassol and Mann, one of the clearest effects of global warming is an increase in extreme heat, something that is being observed around the world and projections suggest it will get worse unless governments act to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reduce.
The researchers predict that heat stress will increase due to the increasing frequency, duration, severity, geographic distribution and duration of high temperatures and extreme humidity.
The climate disruption also brings with it temperatures that our human bodies simply cannot tolerate, they commented.
The human body cools itself by producing sweat, they analyzed, which evaporates from the skin and cools; but when the air is extremely hot and humid, this does not happen and the damage can be fatal, especially to children and the elderly.
“While other climate change disasters, like hurricanes, are more visually dramatic, extreme heat is invisible and silent but very costly in terms of lives and money.”
Over the past 30 years, high temperatures have claimed more lives in the United States than hurricanes and floods combined, according to official figures.
On the other hand, the impact of the heat on the US economy in 2020 alone amounted to $100 billion in lost labor productivity.
That number is projected to double in 2030 and hit half a trillion dollars in 2050. That corresponds to one percent of the northern country’s gross domestic product.
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