Death toll from global heatwave rises: 1,000 people die in Mecca from extreme heat
Hundreds of millions of people around the world are affected by deadly heat waves. In recent weeks, much of the eastern United States has experienced temperatures well above average for this time of year, with heat indexes reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some places, and the National Weather Service is forecasting severe and extreme heat danger for tens of millions of people over the next week.
The U.S. heat wave caused by a “heat dome” is forecast to shift from the Midwest and Northeast to the South and Southwest by the middle of next week, after originating in Mexico in early June.
At least 125 people have died in Mexico this year due to extreme heat. The country was hit by the year’s first named tropical storm, which is set to be one of the strongest hurricane seasons on record. The heat was so intense that howler monkeys were reported to have fallen dead from their trees.
The past week has also seen intense heat across the Mediterranean, which has claimed several lives. Several tourists, including British journalist Michael Mosley, have died from the heat in recent weeks, and Greek authorities have been forced to close the Acropolis to tourists, close schools and station paramedics across Athens as temperatures soared to as high as 44.5 degrees Celsius.
According to meteorologist Panos Giannopoulos, heatwaves occur earlier in the year. Speaking to Greek television station ERT, he said: “We have never had a heatwave before June 19. In the 21st century, we have had several, but none before June 15.”
Similar temperatures prevailed in Italy and Turkey. According to Antonio Sanò, founder of the weather website ilmeteo.it, temperatures in Italy reached over 40 degrees Celsius, about 10 degrees Celsius above normal.
In Turkey, temperatures are now 8 to 12 degrees Celsius above normal, with highs similar to those in Italy and Greece.
Nonprofit research organization Climate Central estimates that extreme heat has become five times more likely due to climate change. And the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a report earlier this year finding that heat-related deaths in Europe have increased by 30 percent over the past 20 years.
India and Pakistan, as well as much of Southeast Asia, are also suffering from deadly heat. India has been experiencing temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius for over a month, and the capital city of New Delhi, home to nearly 34 million people, recorded its highest nighttime temperature in 55 years, at 35.2 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). Adjusted for the heat index, temperatures at night will feel well above 38 degrees Celsius.
The extreme heat has claimed at least 100 lives and caused heat stroke in 40,000 over the past three and a half months. These numbers are likely undercounts as heat-related deaths with accompanying illnesses are often not properly recorded. Dileep Mavalankar, former director of the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar, told the Associated Press: “We do not classify and count deaths as accurately as we should, and that is one of the reasons why heat-related deaths are difficult to count.”
Research by World Weather Attribution estimates that climate change made the onset of the April heatwave 45 times more likely. The Indian Meteorological Department believes the heatwave is one of the longest in the country’s history.
The worst effects of the global heatwave were felt in Saudi Arabia, where an estimated 1,000 people died from the scorching heat during the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The Hajj is one of Islam’s most important religious events and draws millions of people each year on a pilgrimage to the Kaaba, the “House of Allah.” This week, temperatures in Mecca reached 51.8 degrees Celsius.
This year, the Saudi government has issued 1.8 million permits for the hajj, a system designed to control the number of pilgrims. However, many people who cannot afford permits still attend. Saudi officials reported that they had expelled hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims from Mecca earlier this month.
Without authorization, unregistered pilgrims are denied access to air-conditioned areas and other safety systems used to combat the intense heat. On Thursday morning, CBS News reported that an Arab diplomat said 630 of the 658 deaths were unregistered. At the time of this writing, 10 countries have confirmed a total of 1,081 deaths.
This year’s extreme heat is partly due to El Niño, the warm period of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) that occurs in the Pacific Ocean.
ENSO fluctuates between the warm El Niño and the cool La Niña as convection currents in the ocean bring warmer or cooler water to the surface. This fluctuation, which ranges from about half a degree Celsius to above average, results in wetter, drier, cooler or warmer climates around the world.
The current El Niño phenomenon, which began last spring/summer, is one of the strongest on record and has been linked to severe droughts in Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and India.
But the El Niño event cannot be blamed for the current heat waves alone. The real cause is climate change. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show that average global temperatures have been rising steadily since the 1950s and that the extremes associated with ENSO have increased with it.
ENSO’s climate changes gain energy and impact from a warming climate that alters their behavior. As the world warms, ENSO’s effects also become stronger. If the ENSO cycle is like a seesaw, climate change is like a person behind the seesaw, pushing it toward more extreme events. La Niña is associated with stronger hurricane seasons, and this year is predicted to be one of the most productive in history. And while La Niña is a relatively cooling event in the tropics, it can cause higher temperatures in parts of North America and Asia.
The current heat wave comes as El Niño weakens and transitions into a La Niña cycle, bringing relative cooling to the planet. But that doesn’t offset the effects of climate change. The 2021 heat wave, which claimed more than 1,600 lives in Canada and the U.S., occurred in the middle of a three-year La Niña cycle. That period saw some of the worst natural disasters in recent years, including two of the most intense hurricane seasons in U.S. history, historic flooding in Australia, and severe heat waves and wildfires in Chile and Argentina.
As the earth continues to warm, such natural disasters will only become more frequent and more severe. The rising death toll from the current heatwave is a result of global warming and the failure of governments around the world to effectively combat climate change and provide adequate social services to people most at risk from extreme heat events.
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