Climate change is making heat waves stronger and longer. Naming and ranking them like we do with hurricanes will make governments, companies and people take hot days more seriously
Recently, I interviewed a DoorDash driver named Britni Duwii for a story about the dangers of extreme heat. Britni worked in Mesa, Ariz., which, at the time, was under a weeks-long heat advisory. The average temperature in July was a blistering 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes, Britni told me, she had to endure long shifts in her car with the air conditioner broken. Heat would exhaust her so much that she would often pass out on the couch as soon as she got home from work.
The debate over whether to name heat waves has been going on for several years. Some skeptical scientists say, because heat waves vary in length, intensity and geography, classifying them will create an enormous administrative burden. They also say the temperature is relative—heat risk depends on how much a city, and even a person, can adapt to heat.
Although heat waves are destructive, they don’t leave massive and immediate trails of debris in the same way a tornado or hurricane does. Nevertheless, the U.S. could end up spending tens of billions more per year for road maintenance and replacement as a consequence of high temperatures. Besides being an invisible weather disaster, heat is also a long-term hazard, and some researchers worry naming heat waves would put too much emphasis on extraordinary heat events instead of on the chronic effects of heat, which can be just as dangerous. “I have been working in communities that have had significant health impacts from heat but did not have extreme heat waves,” says Olga Wilhelmi, a geographer studying extreme heat risks at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
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