Escalating Extreme Heat: A Growing Global Problem
Between 2022 and 2023, hundreds of millions of people in Europe, China, Africa, and parts of the US saw the warmest temperatures on record over the world’s land area, with 60 million Americans in at least 16 states seeing temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius on July 21, 2022 and 100 million under heat alerts.
Between 2023 and 2024, an estimated six billion, three hundred million people lived through at least thirty-one days of extreme heat, meaning 78 percent of the global population experienced a phenomenon made more than two times possible by human activities.
Between 2024 and 2025, around four billion people experienced at least 30 days of extreme heat, implying that at least 49 percent of the global population survived through a condition made possible by human activities, with 67 extreme heat events happening during the period.
In the past three years, climate change has caused more and more people to see days of extreme heat, at figures higher than at any time since record keeping began during pre-industrial times.
Between 2023 and 2024, climate change added an average of 26 extreme heat days that may not have happened, with some nations going through greater intensity of heat, such as Suriname with 158 extreme heat days, Ecuador with 170, El Salvador with 148, Guyana with 141, and Panama with 137.
Between 2024 and 2025, climate change added an average of 30 extreme heat days that may not have taken place, with the Caribbean region among the most affected by additional extreme heat days, the island of Aruba for example recording 187 extreme heat days, 142 more than would have been expected without the climate crisis.
Between 2022 and 2023, climate change made extreme hot days warm twice as fast as an average summer day in North West Europe, with July 2023 being the hottest month ever recorded and a number of heat waves starting across part of the northern hemisphere in April 2023.
Needless to say, more people now live through extreme heat days due to the increasing number of days climate change adds to them every year, as well as the increasing number of extreme heat days experienced yearly.
Due to the extreme heat, marine heat waves (MHWs) affected a total area of 30,00,000 square kilometers of the ocean between January and April 2024, while 15,00,000 square kilometers were affected in the last six months of the year, the area affected by NHWs the highest since record keeping began 20 years ago, breaking the previous record set in 2023.
Between 2023 and 2024, MHWs affected nearly 10 percent of the global ocean, with the summer of 2023 and 2024 experiencing almost 3.5 times as many NHWs compared to any previous era in history, leading to widespread disruptions, including triggering the fourth global coral bleaching event.
Between 2022 and 2023, MHWs affected 58 percent of the ocean surface with at least one event, with ocean heat content reaching a record high in 2022, exceeding the 2021 value by nearly 17 zettajoules (ZJ).
MHWs are just one of the many consequences of the extreme heat phenomenon in the past three years, including drought, heat stress, diseases, famine, and others.
Urban greening, international cooperation, and heat-resilient initiatives such as heat-action plans could be undertaken to address the issue of extreme heat, which may become a great challenge going forwards.
What to Eat
Vegan food from Panama, Credit, The Nomadic Vegan