In the coming decades, climate change will lead to a significant increase in the frequency and severity of dangerous extreme heat across the contiguous United States, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has warned.
The organization has conducted an analysis of current heat trends to make predictions about the future climate for a new report and accompanying study published in the journal Environmental Research Communications.
According to the research, climate change will lead to a spike in the number of days per year when the heat index—or "feels like" temperature—exceeds 100 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit, unless drastic action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
By the middle of the century, the team predict that there will be an average of 36 days in the contiguous states where the heat index will exceed 100 degrees—around double historical baseline levels. This figure will increase to 54 by the latter part of the century.
Meanwhile, the number of days where the heat index exceeds 105 degrees is estimated to increase more than four-fold to 24 by mid-century. And by late century this figure will rise to 40.
In fact, the analysis suggests that there will be few areas of the country that will escape these extreme heat events, save for some high-altitude mountainous regions.
"Our analysis shows a hotter future that's hard to imagine today," Kristina Dahl, senior climate scientist at UCS and co-author of the report, said in a statement. "Nearly everywhere, people will experience more days of dangerous heat even in the next few decades."
"By the end of the century, with no action to reduce global emissions, parts of Florida and Texas would experience the equivalent of at least five months per year on average when the 'feels like' temperature exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with most of these days even surpassing 105 degrees," she said. "On some days, conditions would be so extreme that they exceed the upper limit of the National Weather Service heat-index scale and a heat index would be incalculable. Such conditions could pose unprecedented health risks."
Currently, the only place that experiences these "off-the-charts" days—when the heat index is 127 degrees Fahrenheit or higher—is the Sonoran Desert on the border of southern California and Arizona.
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