The list of climate-related disasters in the US was long last week as vast swathes of America sweated under a brutal heatwave.
There was a “mass-casualty event” of fainting high-schoolers in New Jersey as a K-pop concert was cut short in Washington. Young hikers had to be rescued in New Hampshire as tarmac roads bucked and melted in South Dakota and Nebraska.
Luckless Amtrak passengers were stuck on a train with no air conditioning in a Baltimore tunnel, while some subway services in New York were suspended. The Trump administration declared a power emergency in the US south-east, and in Georgia the agriculture commissioner advised residents to make sure their animals had water and shade.
“Remember to take care of our friends also,” Tyler Harper said.
These incidents – and many more – were the result of the highest temperatures across the northern and middle swath of the US at this early summer date in some cases since the late 19th century.
Nearly 130 million people were under extreme heat warnings or heat advisories on Thursday, according to Noaa’s Weather Prediction Center, with 282 locations breaking daily heat records this week, with another 121 equalling with previous highs, Noaa data showed.
Daily heat records were set in at least 50 cities in the eastern US on Tuesday alone, according to the National Weather Service, with New York City recording its hottest day since 2012, according to Noaa.
Climate scientists blamed a rapidly warming Arctic for the heat dome – a consequence that they say is the result of the “stuck” weather patterns that come from a wavier polar jet stream, which can cause not just heatwaves but also heavy rainfall and floods.
A new study, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said found that stalled atmospheric patterns have tripled over the last 70 years.
The authors of the study claim that while climate models predict that these patterns would occur more frequently with climate change, their study is the first to demonstrate that it is already happening – and will likely intensify as the planet continues to warm.
Climate Central’s climate shift index estimates that high temperatures over the past few days were at least five times more likely to occur because of human-caused climate change. Climate Central scientist Zachary Labe told Politico that the early heatwave “is a stark reminder that climate change is making these dangerous and oppressive heat waves far more likely, affecting millions of people”.
“One of easiest ways to see climate change’s impact is in how it’s increasing the chance these types of heatwaves will occur,” Labe told Bloomberg. “By the middle of this century, these types of heat waves will be normal. The extremes will be even higher.”
According to the American Medical Association, elevated temperatures nearly 22,000 people died from heat in 14 years between 1999 and 2023. The National Weather Service statistics show heat claiming more lives than any other weather-related event.
But heat events are only fatal in the extreme. A broader, general sense of oppression and discomfort was palpable in New York last week, when the extreme hear arrived after a cool spring and gave New Yorkers little time to acclimatize.
“We all know that prolonged heat exposure can have serious effects on your overall health, including mental health, but it can also negatively affect your skin,” said Kim Laudati, chief executive of IT Intelligent Treatment, a skin regeneration business in New York.
Prolonged heat exposure due to the skin’s moisture-barrier protective function becomes damaged, Lauditi said, leading to water loss within deeper and surface layers of skin, resulting in a state of dehydration.
Chronic heat can lead to vasodilation and persistent redness. Inflammation ensues, which can also promote heat-induced erythema, or redness, to the point of creating telangiectasia; commonly known as “spider veins” and melasma, a skin discoloration.
There is also reduced concentration, irritability, and mood swings because the body is diverting resources to regulate body temperature; the impairment of melatonin production, leading to poor sleep. Heat-related damage to the blood-brain barrier can cause lack of focus, confusion, fainting and organ failure.
“With climate change already reshaping how we live, it’s more important than ever that we educate ourselves,” Lauditi said.
Climate change was on the minds of voters last week in New York’s mayoral primary that culminated on the hottest day of heat-dome, when a thermometer at Belvedere Castle in Central Park registered 99 degrees for the first time since July 18, 2012.
Democrat mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has said that the climate crisis is the central issue of out time and that it isn’t separate from the crisis of capitalism, making it a co-traveler with his resonant message about the affordability of life, or lack of it, in the city.
Zohran’s climate platform is grounded in making the lives of working people better through climate action,” said Denae Ávila-Dickson with the Sunrise Movement, a climate group that endorsed Mamdani. “He has an important commitment to transforming New York City into a national leader on climate.”
“It’s clear to us that the climate crisis has been politicized, but it’s not a political issue,” Ávila-Dickson added. “It’s affecting people in every city, in every state, and a lot of times we fee that it affects people in right in rural States, especially because they’re not having those same kinds of resources.”
In a typical year between 1979 and 2000, the average temperature in the northern hemisphere temperature would break the 21C (69.8F) barrier in July and continue for about five weeks, according to University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.
But last year, the hottest on record, the northern hemisphere’s average temperature held above 21C from 13 June until 5 September, and data from the Environmental Protection Agency shows that heatwaves have grown longer, more frequent and more intense over the past seven decades.
“If I was to compare this with what happened in the 20th century, it would be very unusual,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a Swiss climate scientist at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science of the ETH Zurich, told the Washington Post.
