Heat waves now want in on the action: "We need the naming and ranking of heat waves"

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Today, the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, along with 30 global partners, announced the formation of the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance (EHRA). Bringing together global cities’ leaders, experts in public health, finance, humanitarian assistance, disaster management, climate science and risk, insurance and public infrastructure, this Alliance rallies critical capabilities and networks to tackle the growing threat of extreme urban heat for vulnerable people worldwide.

“This extreme heat crisis can no longer be the ‘silent killer’ it is,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, Director and SVP of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. “This growing risk – and related solutions – must be blasted from a megaphone to decision makers and to people everywhere made even more vulnerable by the impacts of COVID-19. With the power and reach of the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, priority one is to build a standard practice of naming and ranking heat waves globally, just as we do with tropical storms, so that comm

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In the U.S., heat waves occur roughly six times a year, up from just two in the 1960s, and kill more people than hurricane- and flood-related deaths combined. In the past two decades they have claimed tens of thousands of American lives.

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“Naming heat waves as a global threat is the first step to being able to mitigate the risk to vulnerable communities.

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A heat wave is defined by the National Weather Service as a period of abnormally and uncomfortably hot and unusually humid weather that typically lasts two or more days. The World Health Organization defines it in human-health terms: as prolonged periods of excessive heat that results in dehydration, heat stroke, heart kidney failure, and a host of heat-related illnesses that can lead to mortality.

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