After working outside in her garden on a sweltering Saturday in late June 2018, a 64-year-old Pennsylvania woman was taken to the hospital, where she died of cardiac arrest. The next day, a 30-year-old man running a trail race in upstate New York collapsed a half mile before the finish line. He was brought to the hospital and died that day. Hundreds of miles apart, these two deaths shared a common culprit: extreme heat. By the time the week was out, heat would claim the lives of at least three more people in the United States (Miller and Park 2018; Palmer 2018).
This 52 page report on Extreme Heat has been published by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It takes a look at the issues facing us today and in the days and years to come if we don’t manage to get control of the green house gas emissions that are heating up the earth.
Although the report is more focused on the United States, it has global implications. Download the report from this link.