BENI MELLAL, Morocco (AP) — As people slept on rooftops in the relentless heat of Morocco’s Central Atlas region, Hanna Oubour was among those in need of shelter as she waited outside a hospital for her diabetic cousin in an unair-conditioned room.
At the main hospital in Beni Mellal, where most of the city’s 575,000 residents have no air conditioning, 21 people died of heatstroke as temperatures soared to 48.3 degrees Celsius (118.9 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
“We have no money and no options,” said Oubour, an unemployed 31-year-old from Kasbah Tadra, a warmer city that some experts describe as one of the hottest on Earth.
“Most of the dead were people with chronic diseases and the elderly, whose health conditions deteriorated due to the high temperatures, leading to their deaths,” regional health director Kamal Eliansri said in a statement.
This is a matter of life and death in the heat.
As global warming progresses, The hottest day on recordAt the time, the world was focused on the cold, hard numbers showing the average temperature across the planet.
However, the value of 17.16°C (62.8°F) Recorded on Monday A thermometer can’t tell you how muggy a particular place gets when sunlight and humidity are at their peak. A thermometer can’t tell you how warm it is for people to sleep and doesn’t disappear at night.
Records are statistics, they’re for keeping score, but people don’t feel data, they feel heat.
“Our bodies instantly tell us what the temperature is outside, we don’t need scientists to tell us,” says Humayun Saeed, 35, a fruit seller on the street in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital.
Said had to go to hospital twice in June for heat stroke.
“The heatwaves in May and June made it difficult to do work, so although the situation is much better now, I have avoided my morning walks,” said Saeed. “I may resume them in August when the temperature drops further.”
Standing outside a train station in Bucharest, Romania, Delia, a 38-year-old pregnant woman, said the heat was making her feel even worse. During the day, it was too hot and made her sleepy. At night, with no air conditioning, she considered sleeping in her car like her friend.
“I really felt the temperature rise a lot, and I think everyone did too. I felt it even more because I’m pregnant,” said D’Elia, who only gave her first name. “But I don’t think I was the only one. Really everyone was feeling the same thing.”
Self-proclaimed weather geek Karin Bambaco was passionate about her specialty, but things got a little out of hand when Seattle experienced consecutive days of much hotter than normal temperatures.
“I love science. I love weather. Ever since I was a kid,” said Bambaco, Washington state’s deputy climatologist. “It’s fun to see the records being broken every day. … But in recent years, just living in the heat and actually feeling the heat has become more miserable every day.”
“It’s been cold lately. I haven’t been sleeping well. We don’t have air conditioning in our house,” Bambaco said. “Every morning I would wake up and see that the thermostat was a little warmer than the morning before. It was getting hotter and hotter in the house and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.”
For climate scientists around the world, academic research into climate change has been a literal homecoming.
“I’ve been crunching these numbers in the coolness of my office, but the heat is starting to take its toll and rising temperatures in cities are giving me sleepless nights,” said Roxy Matthew Cole, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, Maharashtra, which normally has a relatively warm climate.
“My kids come home from school exhausted during peak hours,” says Cole. “Last month, one of my colleague’s mothers died of heatstroke in northern India.”
Philip Mort, a climate scientist and dean of graduate schools at Oregon State University, moved to California’s Central Valley, where summer temperatures reach triple digits, when he was in middle school.
“I quickly realized I didn’t like the hot, dry climate,” Mort says, “so I moved to the Northwest.”
For decades, Mort has worked on climate issues from the comfort of his home in Oregon, where people fear that global warming will make the Northwest “the last good place to live in America, and everyone will move here and it will become overpopulated.”
But the region was hit by devastating fires in 2020 and a deadly heat wave in 2021, causing some to flee what was meant to be a climate refuge.
Temperatures reached 104 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) during the second week of July, and Mort, a member of the Masters Boat Club, practices on the water on Tuesday and Thursday nights, but this week he decided to hop on a tube and head down the river.
In Boise, Idaho, tubing became so popular during 17 days of heat ranging from 99 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit (37 to 42 degrees Celsius) that people could wait 30 minutes to an hour to get in the water, said John Tullius, general manager of Boise River Raft & Tube.
“I think we’ve seen record numbers for the last 10 days in a row,” Tullius said, adding that he was particularly concerned about the physical strain on field crews retrieving the rafts at the end of the journey.
He built special shade structures for them, increased the number of workers to ease their burden, and encouraged them to stay hydrated.
The swan-shaped pedal boat rental shop in Denver’s City Park isn’t particularly busy because it’s blisteringly hot outside and those brave enough to venture outside have to sit on hot fiberglass seats.
There isn’t much shade for the workers, “but they’re hidden in little huts,” said employee Dominic Prado, 23. “They have really powerful fans in the huts, and I like to put my shirt over them to cool down.”
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Borenstein reported from Washington and Metz reported from Beni Mellal in Morocco. Munir Ahmed in Lahore, Pakistan, Nicolae Dumitrache in Bucharest, Romania, Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, and Brittany Peterson in Denver contributed to this report.
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