As scientists have long predicted, warming is making heatwaves more deadly
In its 2001 Third Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) foresaw that global warming would lead to increasingly deadly heatwaves. “More hot days and heatwaves are very likely over nearly all land areas,” the world’s top climate scientists warned. “These increases are projected to be largest mainly in areas where soil moisture decreases occur.”
“The greatest increases in thermal stress are forecast for mid- to high-latitude (temperate) cities, especially in populations with non-adapted architecture and limited air conditioning,” they wrote at the time. “A number of U.S. cities would experience, on average, several hundred extra deaths each summer.”