The dog days of summer are now just summer

We’re sweating through another brutal summer.

Last month, Baghdad’s thermometers hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit four days in a row, with a record-setting 125.2 degrees on July 28, reported The Washington Post. Though the Middle East is warming faster than the rest of the world, that heat is not so much an outlier as a warning.

A study published last year found that by 2050, Phoenix’s climate could resemble Baghdad’s. And Americans may not need to wait that long: On Sunday, Phoenix saw its record-breaking 34th 110-degree temperature day this year.

But it’s not just desert cities like Phoenix and Baghdad that’ll be hit by intense heat: Heat waves are already sweeping the world, from Vietnam to Western Europe to even Siberia.

And as climate change increases the frequency and severity of heat waves, the dog days of summer — those lethargic, sweaty weeks in late-July and August — will just be summer. The sooner governments face that reality, the more lives they’ll save.

Research published this month showed just how bad it can get. By 2100, heat-related deaths could surpass the current death rate of all infectious diseases combined. And this heat will disproportionately affect poorer countries, as well as nations with older populations.

“Our data indicate that with the continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions, the temperature effects of climate change are projected to be five times deadlier than recent U.S. flu seasons,” said Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study, in a statement. “In poor hot countries, the heat may be even more threatening than cancer and heart disease are today.”

Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people exposed to heat waves rose by about 125 million. As the world warms, those numbers will continue to rise and so will heat-related deaths.

These deaths will be the first recorded casualties of climate change — and some are already making that connection. After Japan’s 2018 heat wave killed more than 1,000 people, for example, researchers found that that event “could not have happened without human-induced global warming.”

Scientists recently came up with a novel, yet simple, idea to soften the blow of this intense heat: naming heat waves like we do hurricanes. Making these events less abstract and drawing attention to the dangers could save lives, even in already vulnerable areas.

“Naming heat waves as a global threat is the first step to being able to mitigate the risk to vulnerable communities,” said California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, in a statement released by the Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, one of the 30 global partners behind the initiative.

“We know that extreme heat harms those who have the least power to protect themselves and has long term ripple effects on our health and economy,” he continued. “Recognizing the impact of heat storms can galvanize global risk players to take action.”

This year, the pandemic is likely to make everything worse, especially for those already vulnerable. COVID-19 has already disproportionately killed more Black and Latino people than white people. And environmental hazards, like heat waves and air pollution, also hit minority communities the hardest.

All that said, COVID-19 restrictions make suffering through a heat wave much harder for low-income people. Air conditioning, for example, is an unaffordable luxury for many. And with many public spaces closed — including parks, beaches and libraries — low-income communities are without any relief from the summer heat, as the World Meteorological Organization warned in May.

Since climate change is the root of the problem, we’re at least a little in control of what we do from here. Cutting emissions will dampen the blow, but we also must adapt to these permanent dog days and ensure that we keep in mind vulnerable populations as we do.

That means local leaders must step up and protect their residents, just as many have during the pandemic. If that effort is botched — like has happened with the U.S. federal government’s response to COVID-19 — we’ll see countless preventable deaths and immeasurable suffering, as heat waves get deadlier by the year.