Future of the Midwest Includes Hazardous Heat and Most Homes Aren’t Ready
Date Posted: September 19, 2023
Posted In: Discussion, Environment/Sustainability,
From St. Louis Public Radio: As temperatures start to cool in September, it might be easy to forget the scorching heat of just a month before. In middle to late August, parts of the Midwest experienced a streak of “feels like” temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
In one 48-hour period, the Centers Disease Control and Prevention reported record numbers of people suffering from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, fainting and other heat-related illnesses at emergency rooms in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.
Such heat can be deadly, said Peter Thorne, an expert on the impact of climate change on health at the University of Iowa.
“People have different susceptibility to heat,” said Thorne, whose Thorne Lab conducts advanced environmental health sciences research. “Heat stroke, for example, kills more people every year than does air pollution-induced asthma in the U.S. or other respiratory effects of climate change.”
About a year ago, a research and technology nonprofit called First Street Foundation released its “extreme heat belt” map. It shows that within about 30 years, Americans across the Midwest and parts of the South will face heat indices (or “feels like” temperatures) of 125 degrees or higher with greater frequency.
Justin Glisan, Iowa’s state climatologist, worries about what more hazardous heat days will mean for humans, livestock and farms.
“That stretch of days we saw in August is kind of what it’s going to look like in the middle to late 21st century if we look at the global climate model projections,” Glisan said. “The infrastructure that we have now is not built for where we are, and it’s definitely not built for where we’re going.”