FYI Climate Celia Peterson/Getty Images

It depends on who you are and where you live. Humans thrive in Kuwait City, where average highs top 110° for several months a year. But extended runs of hot days and warm nights do lead to spikes in mortality, and climatologists expect an increasing number of heat waves in years to come.

How many deaths will result? People in different cities have different susceptibilities. Simon N. Gosling, a geographer at the University of Nottingham in England, looked at 30 years of data from cities around the world and observed that people who live in hot cities tend to be more resilient. In New England, Gosling found one additional death per 100,000 city-dwellers when the temperature reached 99°. In Texas, the same effects kicked in only when the mercury topped 113°.

Humans can adapt, though. Robert E. Davis of the University of Virginia studied heat-related mortality in 28 American cities during a period when heat waves were becoming more frequent. In more than two thirds of them, the number of deaths decreased. Why? We now have access to better health care, as well as smarter urban planning, more effective heat-watch warning systems and more air conditioners. So if the average summer temperature in Boston were to rise steadily over the next 80 or 100 years, New Englanders would start responding to the heat more like the people in Texas—or even Kuwait City.

Have a burning science question you'd like to see answered in our FYI section? Email it to fyi@popsci.com.

17 Comments

Or move north. Canadians are cool.

Sure glad I moved to a cooler climate away from Phoenix to Las Vegas, about 5 degrees cooler, but the way it is going I'm either have to move again soon or wait until the ocean starts filling up the valley??? Alaska may be my next move.

Ron Bennett

Um, Weather variability from the extra heat in both the Atlantic and Pacific Conveyer from increased heat release via increased plate techtonics from the inter-glaciation process' occasional "burps" in the core and mantle has nothing to do with Geographical Location,Line of Latitude,or Elevation ("Climate")
When enough heat vents from the earth's tectonic plates,only then will Average Global Tempature rise from 15c,where it's been for 10,000 years,to 16c causing possible mass extinctions like how 14c to 15c killed off the Woolly Mammoth and others used to a Cooler Earth

Hot

Hot HOT! I believe there is long scientific evidence that shows clearly the cycles of the sun and earth weather heat\cool cycle changes.

I also think it is scientific clear, that human have in short time influence climate change in a a hot way.

I also think it is bad to pee in a swimming pool and swim and drink the water too. Polluting our world is never a good idea.

To be completely fair, all my comments now are my opinion.
Take care and we are all going to die eventually. In our travel in life, leave a clean nice foot print and be kind to others.

curious thought following the "Gia:mother earth" thought process, is this just the earths way of inducing "fever" to rid itself of a "parasite" lol. But seriously its just a slight bump in the road of climate history for this planet. Nothing more nothing less. I give it 10-20 more years before we start cooling off again.

Oh good more propseudosci.

Try this one with a hockey stick graph. Global warming lie.

Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years

Measurements stretching back to 138BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling due to changes in the distance between the Earth and the sun.

Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC.

D13,
Human population and its consumption to live and the by products of pollution we make for the simplest basic living will be humanities demize.

Just fill a seal fish bowl with roaches and keep feeding them. They will multiple and eventually those that die and their waste products of those living will kill the majority of the population via this enclosed ecosystem with disease.

Now picture humans at the roaches and Earth is the seal fish bowl.

Proffessor Hawking said, for the future of mankind to survive, we must move to outerspace and establish ourselves.

As I understand Proffessor Hawking, we must establish our fish bowl and deal with our environmental problems, head on to survive.

Well...considering the world population is set to skyrocket over the next few decades, this might not be a bad thing. You see, the earth exists in a state of homeostasis. As things change that screw that up the earth will correct. So as AGW, solar flares, etc start to heat things up the earth will take measure to counteract that. So as we over-polute and over-populate the planet, the planet will rise in temp until we are dead. At the very least it will do so until enough of us are dead that the CO2 contributions are null and void.

D13, apparently you only read the part of the Wikipedia article on world population that satisfied your anxiety about population growth. If you examine the graph at the top or read the rest of the article you will note that population GROWTH RATE is DECLINING in most developed (wealthy) countries. In other words, the era of rapid population growth, roughly the last 80 years, is coming to an end.

The only places where the growth rate is not declining yet is in poor countries in Asia and Africa. In fact, the economic effects of the rapid population decline that will soon follow in major economies like Japan and Italy is worrisome.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

D13, Robot, Tatersalad and anyone else who loves doom and gloom, sorry to rain on your parade. The U.N. projects population to peak somewhere between 7.5 and 10 billion. 10 billion means an increase of about 43% from the nearly 7 billion currently, easily sustainable.

The output of CO2--the villain of climate alarmists--will naturally decline as population declines. It's already declining per capita in developed (wealthy) countries because they find more efficient ways to use energy and manufacture things. At the same time, many of those developed countries are planting trees and reforesting so CO2 will be mitigated somewhat. Pretty much good news all around. Oh yeah, and with the current period of rising CO2, crop yields will increase. Plants love the stuff.

Our dear USA govenment is simuliar to a person with a narcissistic personality disorder. They feel they are correct in all their decisions and ingore all their mistakes. They are unstoppable in managing money, when it comes to spending it on themselves. They glorify and exagerate all their accomplishments. They are only nice to others, if it benefits themselves and to the root of it all is insecurity, which is why the government is paranoid now of ALL USA citizens and ALL people of the world and feel justified in monitoring their communications.

I feel the USA budget system is broken and busted, beyong repair. The government can not make unselfish intelligent beneficial decisons for the public anymore. Social security and medicare has been declared dead in 10 to 20 years. It all just makes me feel depressed and well "f#ck" for the future. It is a scary kind of depression.

Oh then add the distance of the 1% rich is so well above and beyond the other 99% working folk and continue to own everything and make profit, while the rest of us just struggle along in life.

The world populations is out of control. World recources are getting less and less and the world human population is over whelming planet Earth.

I think I will just go home and love my family more and try to be nice to all the other people around me too!!!!! I am not going to be apart of this madness, nope. If the sh#t for the world hits the fan, I want to live and die a decent man and Christian, despite what ever the world brings.

People better start thinking about Co2, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon is a solid, even out in space, and when you fill the skies, with this Dirty Diesel Fuel from the Exhausts from Jet Airlines,what would you expect, Carbon particles in the atmosphere is heated by the sun, which creates more heat.

What is happening is they take oil out of the ground, and shove it up into the air and Jet Stream, now Co2 at ground level gives off oxygen from the Trees, but there are no trees at 20,000 to 50,000 feet!

Which is just that more building up in the Atmosphere. The law of conservation states, that nothing can be destroyed, it only can change form.

There are over 8000 aircraft at any given time overhead,in the United States (FAA) Dumping over 80,000 Tons of this Dirty Diesel fuel into the Jet Stream,PER HOUR, which tornadoes Form and follow and into your clouds and air. Now do we need more Jets, which will destroy this planet, or Cleaner air. The World can only get hotter and hotter, till we have no crops, or food, we just keep putting this filth into the Air. Wake up People, when you make your Bed, then you have to lie in it, and Die.



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