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As the Climate Warms, Heat-Related Deaths Almost Certain to Rise

Heat kills. In 1995 five days of stifling heat lead to more than 750 deaths in Chicago, as mostly elderly and sick people died in their ovenlike apartments. In 2003, a record heat wave struck much of Europe, which led to as many as 70,000 additional deaths due in part to heat. France, which was unused to lingering heat in the summers and which mostly lacks air conditioning, was hardest hit. Thousands of elderly people died during the heat wave in August of that year, so many that some bodies were left unclaimed for weeks. Undertakers in Paris ran out of space to store all the corpses.

So you can imagine that researchers—and officials in big cities—are worried about the effect of killer heat waves in the future, supercharged by climate change. They have reason to fear. A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change by researchers at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Mailman School of Public Heath looked at Manhattan and found that temperature-related deaths could rise by some 20% by the 2020s—and if worse-case scenarios hold, could rise by more than 90% by the 2080s. And that’s despite the fact that rising temperatures in the winter would be expected to reduce deaths from cold. Heat in a hot and crowded world could be that deadly.

The Nature Climate Change study is hardly the first to try to project how rising temperatures could impact heat wave-related deaths, but it is unusually detailed, thanks in part to the minute weather data kept in the city. Monthly average temperatures in New York’s Central Park rose 3.6 F between 1901 and 2000—significantly more than the global and U.S. average. That’s likely due in part to the urban heat island effect—the concrete of a major city holds in heat, causing temperatures to rise and stay hotter than in surrounding, greener areas, especially at night. That’s one reason why big cities like New York will be uniquely vulnerable to longer and stronger heat waves in the future.

Depending on climate models and future action on carbon emissions, temperatures can be expected to rise between 3.3 and 4.2 F by mid-century, and 4.1 to 7.1 F by the 2080s. The best-case scenario projects an increase of temperature-related deaths of about 15% over a 1980s baseline of 370 heat deaths and 340 deaths from cold. The worst case would see an increase of over 30%, which would translate to over 1,000 deaths.

That’s not inevitable though. Even if we fail to curb warming, cities can reduce heat-related deaths through smart interventions, including planting roof-top gardens to cut the urban heat island effect, and providing air-conditioned cooling centers for the elderly and the needy. Indeed, New York and other cities have already taken those steps—Chicago in particular learned after the deadly 1995 heat wave—which is one reason why heat-related deaths in the city actually went down over the second half of the 20th century, even as temperatures increased.

Smart planning can cope with climate change, but an endless summer would tax all our resources—and not just the air-conditioning bill. http://science.time.com/2013/05/20/why-summer-in-the-city-will-get-mor
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Wonder if when THIS starts hitting them personally, any of those fools with their heads buried deep in the sand will start thinking. I mean, if the sand gets hot enough...