As Earth’s climate heats up, extreme heat events will become more likely. According to a recent study, by 2100 extreme heat and humidity will affect 1.2 billion people worldwide — more than four times the number of people affected today. And those effects can be deadly.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 166,000 people died as a result of heatwaves between 1998 and 2017. Seventy thousand of those died in just one summer, during Europe’s 2003 heatwave. In the U.S. alone, heat kills more than 600 people each year.
So yes, heat kills. But how?
Extreme Heat and the Body
Remarkably, the human body operates within a very narrow range of temperatures. That range varies a little from person to person, but not all that much. The body has clever ways of maintaining that optimal temperature range, which is why we stay at a more or less steady internal body temperature winter and summer, indoors and out.
