World must prepare to face increasingly intense heatwaves: UN | World news
The world should prepare to face increasing heat waves, the United Nations warned on Tuesday, as countries in the Western Hemisphere battle from rising temperatures.
Health authorities have sounded the alarm from North America to Europe and Asia, urging people to stay in water and shelter from the scorching sun, in a reminder of the effects of global warming.
“These events will continue to grow in intensity, and the world needs to prepare for more heat waves,” John Nairn, top heat advisor at the UN’s World Climate Organization (WMO), told reporters.
Heat waves are one of the deadliest natural hazards, with hundreds of thousands of people dying from preventable heat-related causes each year.
Nairn warned that health risks are growing rapidly, amid urbanization, higher temperatures and an aging population.
In the short term, he said the recently announced El Nino – a warm weather pattern that occurs every two to seven years – “is only expected to increase the incidence and intensity of extreme heat events”.
But despite El Nino, the trend is clear, Nairn said, pointing out that the number of simultaneous heat waves in the Northern Hemisphere has grown sixfold since the 1980s.
“This trend shows no signs of abating,” he said, warning of heat waves’ “significant effects on people’s health and lives”.
‘Very dangerous’
Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent, is bracing for the peak of the current heat wave to hit the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, amid forecasts of a high of 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).
The WMO said it was monitoring whether the current European temperature record of 48.8C recorded on Sicily in 2021 could be broken.
Even more concerning than maximum daytime temperatures are minimum temperatures at night, Nairn said.
“High temperatures at night are even more dangerous for human health, because the body cannot recover from the constant heat,” he said.
“This leads to an increased incidence of heart attacks and death.”
There is currently no clear definition of what constitutes a heat wave, but the WMO says it is in the process of developing a broad classification of heat intensity, in order to “make impact forecasts and warnings worldwide”.
Experts say that human-induced climate change is increasing heat waves, increasing temperatures and also slowing down and “turning off” warm weather systems over long periods of time.
Asked what should be done to address this, Nairn said the message was “simple”: “Stop carbon fuels; he just took everything”.
