Heat is the new silent killer across world

Three international organisations – Climate Central, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and World Weather Attribution – have released a report about the rising temperature in 2024 which could be traced to the effect of climate change.

The report said that 4 billion people in the world experienced 30 days more of extreme heat. And there were 67 extreme heat events. And they said that this was a direct result of the unabated use of fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide they released into the atmosphere.

They analyzed weather data from May 1, 2024 to May 21, 2025. They found that the temperature crossed the 1.5 degrees Celsius barrier over the pre-industrial era, and over the last five years the average temperature was more than 1.3 degrees Celsius. The report noted, “Although floods and cyclones dominate headlines, heat is arguably the deadliest extreme event.”

Frederick Otto, associate professor of climate science at Imperial College, London, and one of the authors of the report said that heat was the silent killer. Deaths due to heat are mislabelled and underreported. He pointed out, “People don’t fall dead on the street in a heat wave...people either die in hospitals or in poorly insulated homes and therefore are not just seen...With every barrel of oil burned, every tonne of carbon dioxide released, and every fraction of a degree of warming, heat waves will affect more people.”

The report showed that the Caribbean region was the most affected by the extreme events, accounting for 187 days last year. Without climate change the number would have been 45 days. It is the lower income communities and the vulnerable sections like the older people and those with medical conditions who remain most vulnerable to extreme heat.

There was extreme heat in South Sudan in February, in Central Asia in March. And in the Mediterranean last July. At least 21 people died when the temperature touched 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius). Says Roop Singh, head, urban and attribution of Red Cross Red Crescent, in a World Weather Attribution statement, “We need to quickly scale our responses to hear through better early warning systems, heat action plans, and long-term planning for heat in urban areas to meet the rising challenge.”

He said that people are noticing that it is getting hotter but they do not see the connection with climate change.

Many climate change researchers have warned against rising sea levels, melting glaciers and erratic rain patterns, but there was not much emphasis on rising heat and its immediate impact on people.

The 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial or pre-1850 levels, a figure which was mentioned in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 as the ceiling beyond which world temperatures should not go up, has remained an abstract figure.

But the extreme heat events are proving to be dangerous and fatalistic. Extreme heat is now to be treated as a natural disaster even as governments treat excess rains, tropical cyclones and storms as such and provide relief through the national disaster relief programmes.

The plain fact is extreme heat is a natural disaster and it is a consequence of climate change. The linkage of climate change to greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, is pretty evident. The evidence is falling into a pattern. What is needed is determined response to the disaster that climate change brings.

The response has to be an intelligent one based on hard data, and innovative solutions have to be found to mitigate the effects of extreme heat. Extreme heat cannot any more be dismissed as a weather vagary. It is a serious distortion of the weather pattern that we have known for thousands of years. The pattern is breaking down, and it brings in its wake disaster. Every measure has to be taken to prevent the disaster.