Downplaying the catastrophic health impact of heatwaves costs lives

The UK recently well and truly surpassed its daytime and night time highest temperature records. A previous national daytime record of 38.7°C, set in 2019, was broken when temperatures rose above 40°C in the UK for the first time on 19 July and reached a new high of 40.3°C in Lincolnshire. That night, the previous overnight record of 23.9°C (recorded in 1990) was also broken, with the temperature provisionally hitting 25.8°C in Surrey.Heatwaves are often called “silent killers,” and are one of the clearest examples of an environmental hazard that leads to adverse health outcomes.Over the past two decades we have seen changes in individual heatwave characteristics that can be attributed to human induced climate change—and in the past five years we have even detected an increase in excess mortality from heatwaves attributable to human activity. Attribution analysis is complex and time consuming, but a provisional rapid fire analysis by…
Read Original Article: Downplaying the catastrophic health impact of heatwaves costs lives »