The United Nations warns that the world must be prepared for increasingly intense heatwaves as countries in the Northern Hemisphere experience soaring temperatures.
The world should prepare to face increasingly intense heatwaves, the United Nations warned on Tuesday, as countries across the Northern Hemisphere reeled from soaring temperatures.
“These events will continue to grow in intensity, and the world needs to prepare for more intense heatwaves,” John Nairn, a senior extreme heat advisor at the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told reporters in Geneva.
Health authorities have sounded alarms from North America to Europe and Asia, urging people to stay hydrated and shelter from the burning sun in a stark reminder of the effects of global warming.
Heatwaves are among the deadliest natural hazards, with hundreds of thousands of people dying from preventable heat-related causes each year, Nairn said.
Heat is a rapidly growing health risk due to burgeoning urbanization, an increase in high-temperature extremes, and demographic changes in countries with aging populations.
Nairn said that the number of drawn-out and simultaneous heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere had swelled sixfold since the 1980s.
“This trend shows no signs of decreasing,” he said.
“So we’re in for a bit of a ride, I’m afraid, and they will have quite serious impacts on human health and livelihoods.”
Last weekend, the WMO said that excessive heat warnings and advisories covered beyond 100 million people in the United States.
Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent, was bracing for the peak of the current heatwave to hit Italy’s islands of Sicily and Sardinia, where the European Space Agency has forecasted a high of 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).
According to the UN weather agency, the current European temperature record is the 48.8C recorded in Sicily in 2021.
Miroslava Salazar with AFP
