Dangerous Heat Waves Are Becoming More Common

Over 15 million people in the U.S. are being warned of extreme heat this weekend. It's not just ruining your plans — it's dangerous.

Transcript

00:00We are dealing with extreme heat more often than we used to.

00:12Heat waves are increasing in at least three dimensions.

00:15One of them is duration, how long they last.

00:17One of them is intensity, kind of how hot they get at their peak.

00:20And the other is frequency.

00:21They're happening more often.

00:23What we used to call a very intense heat wave is now happening more often.

00:27And that's the case for most of the U.S. and most of the world.

00:56It is the clearest kind of physical, mathematical, and logical relationship with the warming

01:02world.

01:03This time of year with this particular heat wave, you know, the combination with the humidity,

01:07which affects people more, higher humidity means we can't cool off as quickly.

01:12You also get public health concerns when the overnight low temperature, you know, kind

01:16of doesn't reset when the temperatures stay high overnight.

01:20While an afternoon high of 103 degrees may be more kind of captivating than an overnight

01:26low of 81 degrees, in a lot of cases, it's the lack of cooling overnight that's driving

01:34more serious consequences than the spiking of the temperatures in the afternoon.

01:44We're entering a heat emergency.

01:47If the temperature, as predicted, could break 100 degrees on Saturday, that will make it

01:54the hottest day in New York City in the last seven years.

01:58Just 10 minutes parked in the shade with the windows cracked open, the interior of the

02:02car reached 109 degrees.

02:05That's hot enough to kill a young child.

02:08It's really hot out there.

02:10This is really dangerous weather.

02:13Please take care of your neighbors.

02:18June was the warmest June on record for the planet.

02:21This decade is going to clearly be the warmest decade on record, replacing the decade before

02:26that, which replaced the decade before that.

02:28It is the clearest kind of physical, mathematical, and logical relationship with the warming

02:33worlds.

02:34We are not adapted to living with extremes.

02:37We don't develop our systems.

02:38We don't develop our methods of farming or energy distribution to deal with extremes.

02:44So when the climate system starts throwing more and more extremes at us, these are the

02:51events that are costly in terms of dollars and in terms of lives and quality of life.