Moving into the hot seat: Is humanity responsible for heat waves?
By Sophia Maltese
It was an exceptionally warm day for October. Children at Patterson’s Apple Orchard, in Chesterland, Ohio, near Cleveland, freed themselves from their coats and scarves and ran around the pumpkin patch, hoping to find one worthy of being their jack-o-lantern for the upcoming Halloween. Beneath their thumping feet, leaves and straws of hay crunch beneath winter boots while parents and children alike aired out their suffocating sweaters. No one seemed prepared for this heat, which is a problem facing more and more areas of the world as heat begins to intensify.
One such public-health threatening event was the European heat wave of 2003. During this event, temperatures reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas. Residents found little relief as the wave lasted from June until mid-August. This blistering period of heat devastated Europe, killing an estimated 50,000 people, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. Some sources say the heat wave may have killed up to 70,000. During this period of emergency, tens of thousands were sent to hospitals on counts of dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke. After the event, researchers began looking into what really happened, why it was so bad and what could be done to stop something like it from happening again. Researchers were all asking the same question: was climate change to blame?
The heat wave was thought to be climate change-related because of its sheer force. It was unlike anything that had been seen before. In the midst of the event, the heat had countries scrambling. France begged the European Union to assist them in dealing with the effects. In the UK, people were banned from using hose water because of water shortages. Trains everywhere had to adjust their speeds because if they went too fast the hot tracks would buckle. That summer was the hottest on record in the Northern hemisphere in the last 500 years.
No one expected the heat wave, and no one thought that it could be as catastrophic as it was, according to the World Meteorological Organization and the World Health Organization. Yet, in reality, heat waves have been increasing in frequency and severity since the 1980s, according to the Washington Post, and they continue to do so.
This steady rise in temperatures can, in fact, be attributed to the warming earth and changing climate, says Alexander Gershunov, associate research meteorologist in climate atmospheric sciences and physical oceanography at the University of California.
“Heat waves are on the rise all over the world, and that is very consistent with just generally warming climate. As the climate warms you get more of the hot extremes and fewer cold extremes, and that’s exactly what we see all over the world,” said Gershunov in an interview in November 2017.
While policies regarding climate change are being debated, heat waves continue to rage and kill dozens every year. Yet most of the world’s population fail to realize that heatwaves are even a problem, according to Jeff Johansen, a professor of biology and climate change specialist at John Carroll University.
To affirm Johansen’s belief that most people don’t recognize the impacts of heatwaves, multiple students have confessed their ignorance on the issue. “I don’t know for sure [if heat waves are dangerous], I don’t know much about them,” said John Carroll sophomore and biology major Alexa Lowe.
This ignorance can prove to be quite dangerous, as it did in the 2003 European heatwave and the 2010 Russian heatwave. These two events collectively accounted the deaths of approximately 125,000 people, according to the Nature International Journal of Science. That death toll is comparable to wiping out the entire population of Gaum or nearly three times the population of the American Samoa.
An explanation of the lack of awareness is given by the World Meteorological Organization and the World Health Organization’s publication on heatwaves and health. It states that “heatwaves are among the most dangerous of natural hazards, but rarely receive adequate attention. They often lack the spectacular and sudden violence of other hazards, such as tropical cyclones or flash floods. Even the related death tolls are not always immediately obvious.” An example of this is the European heatwave of 2003, whose death toll took scientists years to discern. The first death toll estimates were around 20,000, it has now been concluded that the total is around 50,000, according to the U.S. National Weather Service.
Despite this uncertainty in deaths, after the 2003 European heat wave, the world realized that something needed to be done to prevent an event like that from happening again. Scientists began looking into what made this heat so bad and how it could be addressed. Research about heat waves catapulted in priority, according to Gershunov. Task forces including ones in California, France and the UK became dedicated to finding a way to prevent heat-related deaths as the world tried to band together for the sake of protection and awareness.
One finding of the new research was an increase in the frequency and severity of heatwaves. A team at the University of Honolulu, led by scientist Camilo Mora, collected 900 scientific papers that had been published between 1980 and 2014. They meta-analyzed the papers and found the temperature and humidity levels in which death can occur. Based on the results of their research, the team concluded that today around 30 percent of the world’s population is exposed to potentially deadly heat for at least 20 days every year. They also determined that this exposure to deadly heat will become worse. By 2100, they estimated that 48 percent of the global population will suffer from exposure to extreme heat for at least 20 days per year.
Johansen, at John Carroll University, agrees with this. “The predictions are that we’re going to have heat waves in a lot of places,” he said.
Johansen is not alone in his belief. Many scientists and professionals believe that climate change is to blame for the increasing heat intensity. “Normally people don’t die from heat waves, but it’s just these humid events. They’re really detrimental to health, and those are the ones that have been on the rise, and that trend is clearly linked to global warming. It’s really a clear example of regional weather extreme that’s also highly impactful, who’s behavior and flavor is impacted by global climate change,” said Gershunov.
This reality of increasing humid heat waves can be attributed to the warming oceans, according to Gershunov and other climatologists around the world. The water in them is now evaporating more quickly than it was before, which in turn makes the air heavier with the vapor. This vapor holds in heat better that regular oxygen or nitrogen molecules, which are the two major gasses in the atmosphere. Because of water vapor’s high heat capacity, heat waves are becoming more frequent as the climate warms and water evaporates into the surrounding air.
Regardless of the culprit behind worsening heat, something has to be done about it. As the world realized this, Gershunov was called into action. He is now working with the U.S. National Weather Service to develop targeting warning systems to address the most at-risk individuals during heatwaves.
Most countries have adopted some sort of heat advisory system, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. The issue is getting people to listen and be aware. The people that are at the highest risk for heat related deaths are the ones that can’t do much to get away from the heat, said Johansen. This category specifically includes the elderly and the poor, which is the group the conference held at John Carroll sought to focus on.
“Weather extremes affect disadvantaged people a lot more than they affect wealthy communities. That is the rule globally,” said Gershunov.
While the response systems are being developed, people can start by taking action on their own, said Johansen. “First off [people need] to recognize that heat waves can actually kill us,” he said. A lot of people would not consider heat waves a threat but underestimating this type of weather can be dangerous to your health. When faced with a heat advisory, the best way to respond is to seek a place with accessible air-conditioning, avoid strenuous activity, and stay hydrated.
These things, however, are merely adaptation tactics. “I would like to see some mitigation,” said Johansen. “We already are having a great deal of financial damage, economic loss, and human health loss, and human death loss from climate change — already happening. Things are just going to get worse until we bring CO2 down. I think we have to bring our emissions down.”
However, U.S. citizen Greg Milbourne, an engineer and North Carolina resident, says that mitigation is a waste of time. “Natural climate change has been going on for millions of years and there is not much we can do about it except to prepare for it,” said Milbourne.
Whether or not there is agreement on the validity of climate change, the danger posed by heat waves is serious. Public awareness is the way to begin safety efforts, according to Nature. This, in some areas, will be followed by carbon dioxide mitigation efforts as well. Some, such as Milbourne, consider it to be a waste of time and resources. However, both Johansen and Gershunov, along with 97 percent of scientists would be happy to see something done about climate change. This 97 percent agreement can be attributed to a 2013 study that evaluated 10,306 scientific papers and found consensus on the reality of climate change.
As Johansen expressed his hope for the future and his despair at the lack of belief in climate change, his passion for the environment was evident. Posters of the Earth were hung carefully on the door and bookshelves lined the wall of his office, which is overflowing with the massive weight of dozens environmental books. The faint scent of morning coffee stained the air as Johansen thoughtfully considered what would need to be done in order to stop more heat waves from happening.
He shifted behind his desk and said, “Even if we do incredible action and mitigation, and not only stop increasing our emissions worldwide but get them to go down the other way, it’s still going to be as bad as it is now, in the future, and it’s going to get worse. Essentially, two degrees of warming is unavoidable and most meteorologists would say it looks like we’re going to hit 3–4 degrees by the end of the century.”
