The hottest summer in 2000 years puts the emphasis on extreme heat and health

LSummer’s heat waves have shown all the ways that extreme heat takes its toll on the human body. In US cities from Phoenix to New York, people suffered from heat exhaustion, heat stroke, heat cramps and more. In Texas more than 300 people died from the heat last year — the highest number since the state started tracking deaths in 1989.

In a article published Tuesday in Natureresearchers confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere in 2,000 years. And the stakes are just as high as the temporary workers.

“Many people don’t realize how deadly extreme heat can be,” said Jennifer Wang, executive director of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health. Hundreds of people in the US die every year from heat-related causes, federal data shows. And his increasingalthough some experts believe these deaths are undercounted.

Heat can multiply the effects of other conditions, which can make it difficult to determine whether this is a contributing factor to death or illness. Scientists know that heat can affect a person’s cardiovascular health and risk for chronic conditions. There is also emerging research on how extreme heat can affect mental health, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, addiction, sleep and more, says Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University. And usual medicines such as antipsychotics, beta blockers, diuretics and more can disrupt the way the body handles heat, making people even more vulnerable.

As researchers like Ward and Wang map the impact of a warming planet on its human population, climatologists have tried to show how much change has already occurred and how much we need to prepare for in the future.

“It is very, very worrying,” Jan Esper, professor of climatology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany and corresponding author of the paper, said at a news conference. Last summer’s record heat is a step in the continuation of a clear trend, Esper said. “I wouldn’t be surprised by another big move in the next 15 to 20 years.”

While 2023 brought the hottest temperatures yet, the researchers found that in the past 28 years there have been 25 summers that were hotter than the year 246, the hottest summer of the pre-industrial era, according to Max Torbenson, a research associate at Johannes . Gutenberg University and co-author of the study.

Using two methods, Torbenson and his colleagues calculated the difference between last year’s heat waves and pre-industrial temperatures. Temperatures in 2023 were 2.07 degrees Celsius higher than the average pre-industrial summer between 1850 and 1900. And looking at 2,000 years of tree-ring widths – which can help estimate past temperatures – they calculated that summer 2023 was the exceeded average pre-industrial temperatures. by 2.2 degrees Celsius.

Regardless of whether last summer was 2.07 degrees or 2.2 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times, “the reality didn’t change,” Esper said. Record summer heat caused record deaths in some places, including Texas.

Climate change and public health experts agreed that continued research is critical when it comes to advocating for policies that can combat the health effects of rising temperatures.

Doctors need more incentive to track deaths and illnesses linked to extreme heat in the way they code patients’ conditions in the hospital, Ward said. Currently, only some diagnosis codes, such as those for heatstroke, are billable, meaning they can be used to seek payment from insurance companies. Doctors need to know how to document the diffuse effects of heat on other diseases, she said, and be given time to do so.

Pharmacists can also play a role in educating people about the risks of medications that can make someone more susceptible to high temperatures, Ward added. But she emphasized that change also needs to happen outside of healthcare.

Cooling centers, where many people gained access to air conditioning last summer, are one of the ways communities have begun protecting people from the dangers of extreme heat. Wang calls them “necessary but completely inadequate” in response to rising temperatures.

Local municipalities need to make policy changes, such as requiring more energy-efficient building codes and setting legal maximum temperatures for rental apartments, just as many areas already have legal minimum temperatures in winter, experts say. Cities like Miami have created positions such as chief thermal officer leading the necessary cooperative changes.

The record heat of the summer of 2023 did not surprise the study authors, but it did concern them.

“I don’t worry about myself because I’m too old,” Esper said of the effects climate change will have on the world if it continues unchecked. “But I have two children, and there are many more children.”