Geneva: As nations throughout the Northern Hemisphere struggled with record-breaking temperatures, the UN issued a warning on Tuesday that the world should prepare for increasingly severe heatwaves.
As a stark reminder of the effects of global warming, health authorities have issued warnings across North America, Europe, and Asia, urging people to drink plenty of water and seek shade from the sun.
According to John Nairn, a senior extreme heat adviser at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), these events will only intensify, and the world must get ready for more intense heatwaves.
Also Read: An American has been detained after entering North Korea without permission
Each year, hundreds of thousands of people lose their lives due to preventable heat-related causes, making heatwaves one of the deadliest natural hazards. Nairn cautioned that the health risk was rising quickly due to aging populations, increased temperature extremes, and growing urbanization. He claimed that in the near term, the recently declared El Nino, a warming climate pattern that happens every two to seven years, "is only expected to amplify the occurrence and intensity of extreme heat events." Nairn noted that the number of concurrent heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere had increased six-fold since the 1980s, but regardless of El Nino, the trend is clear.
He warned of the "quite serious impacts on human health and livelihoods" caused by heatwaves. "This trend shows no signs of decreasing," he said.
With forecasts for a high of 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit), Europe, the planet's fastest-warming continent, was preparing for the peak of the current heatwave to hit Italy's Sicily and Sardinia islands.
The WMO stated that it was keeping an eye out for any potential breaks to the 48.8C temperature record for Europe set on Sicily in 2021. The high overnight minimum temperatures, according to Nairn, were more alarming than the maximum daytime temperatures.
The body cannot recover from sustained heat, so high nighttime temperatures are particularly hazardous to human health, according to him.
"This causes an increase in heart attacks and fatalities." There is currently no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a heatwave, but the WMO stated that it was working to standardize impact forecasts and warnings globally by creating a broad classification of heatwave intensity.
Also Read: Anjem Choudary, a UK hate preacher, was detained on suspicion of a terrorist offense
According to experts, human-caused climate change is intensifying heatwaves, bringing higher temperatures, as well as slowing and "parking" hot weather systems over certain areas for longer periods of time.
When questioned about how to combat this, Nairn responded that the message was "simple": "Stop using carbon-based fuels; just electrify everything."