00:01as we wrap up summer it's all about heat on climate in the news today brett will start with
00:07a story from usa today that wraps up the summer the hottest summer on record in the united states
00:13beating out even some of those dust bowl years yeah the famous 1936 year hottest on record along
00:19with 2021 which averaged about 2.6 degrees above normal again we beat that by about half a degree
00:25or so this year unfortunately nights were also extremely warm across much of the country which
00:31causes a big problem for sleeping and again especially the elderly as well it seems like
00:36there were well there certainly were a lot of heat waves this summer the accuweather heat wave counter
00:40and severe index has helped classify that for folks in certain cities across the united states really
00:45showing how severe some of these heat waves were july 4th probably being the worst yeah that was the
00:50july 4th heat dome eastern and midwest southwest did not escape as well we saw state records set in
00:56colorado utah zone new mexico for the summer also the southwest so hot when it's hot in the southwest
01:03it dries up and we had record low water levels for lake mead and powell yeah certainly some very
01:10i guess challenging water levels there which will hopefully be increasing as we head into the winter
01:17within el nino which may bring more rain to the four corners perhaps we will shift from the overall
01:23u.s heat to how we track heat related fatalities and this is a article from npr they partnered with
01:30boston university brett to look at how we track fatalities from heat which is done by the cdc in the
01:38united states and found that in many cases we may be significantly under accounting how many folks
01:42uh pass away from heat yeah it's not uh surprising actually cdc says uh on average about 1700 to 2000
01:51deaths per year in recent years but the new study from the npr in boston university says that could be
01:58as high as 9 000 per year that's a significant undercount could be about five times more than
02:03what has been officially reported what's the cause of that difference all right a couple of things let's
02:07look at the weather first heat wave season has increased about a month and a half dan since the 1960s
02:12that's a big one right there so lengthening the heat wave season and the frequency and duration of
02:16heat waves much worse than it was 20 30 years ago it also seems like from a heat standpoint or
02:21how we
02:22track those deaths they can be it can be masked sometimes you don't necessarily know it's the heat
02:26that's caused the fatality yes absolutely many uh causes of death are marked as heart attack when
02:31it was caused by the heat that initiated the heart attack he also leaves no obvious markers uh for cause
02:38of
02:38death so the death certificates marked as you know a heart attack instead of really the heat it does
02:43seem like some states are getting better at tracking this yes arizona in the phoenix area they're getting
02:48much better at uh causing of cause of death related to heat however many cities such as los angeles uh
02:54places such as texas and florida are still uh have ways to go texas florida have the biggest numbers of
03:00deaths here are related to heat but there's also many other states that don't have as much air
03:04conditioning like washington state for example that also have a pretty right susceptibility to
03:08exactly and that's a big problem for those states and that's going to get worse and worse yeah more
03:12study and research needed here to best understand this this difference thank you brett for other
03:16stories and information about climate you can find that at accuweather.com climate
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