Arquivo da tag: Calor

How Did People Prevent Sunburn Before Sunscreen? (History Facts)

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Original article

Nicole Villeneuve

June 12, 2025

Today, being outdoors on a hot, sunny day usually means traveling with a few sun-blocking essentials: sunscreen, sunglasses, and a hat. Though our knowledge of sun damage is relatively recent — it wasn’t until the 1800s that scientists began to understand ultraviolet rays’ harmful potential — humans have always tried to avoid the unpleasant sting of too much sun. Yet the first commercial sunscreens didn’t arrive until the 20th century — before that, people had to find other ways to prevent getting a sunburn.

Credit: Print Collector/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images 

Clothing and Shade

While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when people first began actively protecting themselves from the sun, evidence suggests that even in prehistoric times, attempts were made to cover the skin both to stay warm in cold weather and also to block the heat of the sun. People covered themselves with animal hides, plant fibers, and later, woven textiles. 

By at least 3000 BCE, some societies started to rely on parasols and umbrellas not only as accessories but also for shade; in ancient Egypt, they were often made out of palm leaves or feathers. Egyptians also wore lightweight, loose-fitting linen garments and headdresses to shield themselves from the sun. In ancient Greece, people commonly wore wide-brimmed hats such as the petasos, protecting their faces and necks from direct sunlight.

Credit: Alex Treadway/ Photodisc via Getty Images 

Pastes and Oils

Early humans also used primitive versions of sunscreen made from natural compounds. Red ochre, a type of claylike iron oxide, has been mixed with water and applied as a paste to the skin since the time of early Homo sapiens. This mixture was used for ceremonial reasons, but scientists believe it may also have served as a physical barrier against the sun. 

Ancient Egyptians, meanwhile, used skin treatments made from ingredients such as rice bran (which absorbs UV light), jasmine (to help repair sun-damaged skin), and lupine (believed to lighten the complexion). Ancient Greece had its own approach: Olive oil was commonly applied to the skin between 800 and 500 BCE. While it offered limited protection, modern studies have found it has a natural sun protection factor (SPF) of about 8 — enough to slightly reduce burning, though far lower than today’s common SPF 30 (the minimum recommended by dermatologists).

Like with ochre, other pastes were made from a variety of natural compounds, including mud and clay. These were used not only as camouflage or ceremonial decoration, but also as protection from the sun. Zinc oxide was used in India as early as 500 BCE, and water reeds and spices were turned into sunscreen by the Sama-Bajau peoples of Southeast Asia around 840 CE. Indigenous peoples in the Americas, meanwhile, used sunflower oil, pine needles, western hemlock bark, and deer fat, while thanaka, a mixture made from ground bark and water, has been used in Myanmar (formerly Burma) for more than 2,000 years. 

Credit: The Picture Art Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo

Masks

Over time, in some societies — including in ancient Egypt and later in Europe and parts of Asia — protecting the skin became a mark of social status. A pale complexion signaled that you could afford to avoid outdoor manual labor and instead spend your days indoors or in the shade. 

In Egypt, this desired look was achieved through use of parasols and topical skin treatments that blocked the sun. In Europe in the 16th century — particularly in France and England — upper-class women wore striking-looking visard masks to prevent sunburn and preserve that pale complexion. 

The visard mask was made of black velvet with a silk interior lining, and its only features were a slight protrusion for the nose and small holes for the eyes and mouth. The masks weren’t just eerie to look at, either — they were rather unsettling to wear. Most versions didn’t have straps and were instead held in place by a bead or button gripped between clenched teeth; the wearer couldn’t speak while the mask was on. 

By the early 1700s, visard masks had spread beyond the aristocracy, and beyond their intended purpose of preventing sunburns. Women of various social classes wore them, including sex workers, who often used them to discreetly enter public spaces such as theaters. In 1704, Britain’s Queen Anne even banned visard masks from the theater, but they’d already lost their status among the elite and eventually faded out of use.

Credit: brandstaetter images/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images 

Tannins and Trusty SPF

By the end of the 19th century, dermatologists confirmed that prolonged exposure to the sun’s UV rays could inflame or burn the skin, and scientists began experiments to develop effective and suitable topical sun protection. In 1878, Austrian physician Otto Veiel promoted tannins — natural compounds found in many plants — as viable sun protection, but they also discolored the skin. 

In 1891, a German doctor experimented with what was likely the first true attempt at a chemical sunscreen, a quinine-based ointment to treat skin sensitivity to sunlight. And in the early 1900s, German physician Paul Unna came up with another sunscreen precursor, a paste made of natural ingredients such as chestnut extract. Ultimately, these early products didn’t apply well, either discoloring the skin or going on too thick, and so the experiments to find a better solution continued.

It wasn’t until the mid-1900s that sunscreens began to resemble what we use today. In 1942, the U.S. military tapped the American Medical Association to study products or substances that could help protect soldiers from getting sunburned during particularly hot World War II Pacific campaigns. The solution was a thick, red, veterinary petroleum salve, also known as “red vet pet.” It was waterproof, durable, nontoxic, inexpensive, and, most importantly, relatively effective. 

Florida pharmacist Benjamin Green had served in the Air Force throughout the war, and in 1944, he began experimenting with ways to make the sticky substance more appealing. He added ingredients such as cocoa butter and coconut oil, creating a smoother, nicely scented lotion — the earliest version of what later became Coppertone. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, sunscreen formulas continued to improve in texture and ingredients, offering broader protection against UVA and UVB rays, and by the 1970s and ’80s, sunscreen was widely marketed for sunburn protection and as a tanning aid.

Today, sun protection can be as subtle as a swipe of SPF lip balm or as advanced as UV-reflective clothing and tinted window film. The methods may have changed, but the instinct remains the same: When the sun beats down, we find ways to keep cool, stay covered, and avoid the burn.

The heat wave that made America legalize shorts (National Geographic)

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Original article

Forced to sweat and suffer under the weight of clothes and societal norms, a broiling summer that killed thousands of Americans finally got us to consider the wonders of shorts and t-shirts.

In 1936, a punishing heat wave struck the United States, pushing forward the adoption of air conditioning and accelerating a fight over acceptable fashion. No surprise, then, that thousands gathered to refresh themselves on a crowded beach in New York in this image from July 1936. AFP/Getty

By Geoff Williams

Published July 1, 2026

People often say that a country is going to hell. And the summer of 1936 was certainly infernal. Over the course of the summer, over 11,000 Americans and 1,000 Canadians either perished in the heat, or because of the heat.

The heat can kill you in crazy ways. Even if it doesn’t destroy your body, you could be driving, and your tire might blow out, and suddenly you’re careening into a tree. That type of thing happened a lot during the summer of 1936.

The extremes of that summer also resulted in something less dire: T-shirts and shorts became widely popular.

Before then, people were used to dressing in a lot of layers. And while the materials in summer were lighter, they were still hot. That arrangement was tolerated most summers.Temperatures would climb, and everyone would grimace and bear it, sweating underneath coats and petticoats, vests and corsets, hats and gloves. But the summer of 1936 was too much. It was a summer when people perished because of their choice of clothing.

That year would have been a memorable one for weather, even without the diabolical summer. The winter of 1935-1936 brought almost-impossible-to-survive temperatures, like -60 degrees (in Parshall, North Dakota). Throughout the country, hundreds of Americans froze to death in their homes. And in early April, 14 tornadoes struck the southeastern United States overnight, killing at least 454 Americans.

And then, of course, there was the summer.

There were signs in the spring that the summer might be hot—people across the country were already collapsing from the heat and ending up in hospitals. By May, the first deaths started—but nobody knew what they were dealing with until the mercury and death toll started rising and never seemed to end. States and territories alike were under assault.

From Maine to Arizona, Alaska to Alabama, virtually no part of the country was untouched by the summer heat. A few places came out mostly unscathed—Wyoming and Colorado, thanks in part to mountain winds, fared pretty well. Most of Florida, due to its ocean breezes, came out fine, and it helped that its citizens were pretty accustomed to the heat. Hawaii, a U.S. territory at the time, had some schools shut down in August due to the heat, but otherwise, it was a tropical paradise. But just about everywhere else, Americans—and Canadians—were in a fight for survival.

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In Wichita, Kansas, for instance, the high was 100 or more degrees for 20 days in a row. That same month, in August, Oklahoma City had 22 days in a row of 100 or more degrees. Earlier that summer, on July 14, it was as if Mother Nature placed the entire continent underneath a giant magnifying glass: more than 1,000 people officially were killed by the heat.

That number was likely far more, however, due to indirect deaths, like the aforementioned tire blowout. After all, if the heat causes you to seek cooler air in your basement, and then you fall down the stairs, as happened to Frank Cress, a 74-year-old man in Cincinnati, was it the heat that did him in, or bad luck and gravity? Coroners weren’t always certain what to put down on the death certificate.

On July 14, 1936, at one Detroit hospital, a doctor performed 150 autopsies of heat victims in a 36-hour period (the day before, the Associated Press reported that over a 14-hour period in Detroit, the heat was killing residents at a rate of one every 10 minutes). In the Twin Cities, newspapers said that the deaths were coming in at three per minute.

In Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota, the mercury ranged between 100 and 110 degrees. It hit 113 degrees in several cities like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Fredonia, Kansas. In Brawley, California, it reached  122 degrees.

And yet if you wore shorts in the wrong city, or if you were a male taking off your shirt at the beach, you might be arrested.

How extreme heat transformed America

You can argue that every season, or even every day, brings some changes that affect the historical timeline. But the summer of 1936 made a profound impact on the country’s future, starting with air-conditioning.

That summer was practically a three-month advertisement for the fledgling air-conditioning industry. Minneapolis hospitals were soon promising their community that they’d have cool air in the operating rooms before the year was up. Harvard’s School of Public Health quickly produced a study that determined that a newborn’s chance of survival shot up by 26 percent if they were born in an air-conditioned room. If it weren’t for World War II, throttling its progress, air-conditioning would have certainly become more mainstream earlier than the 1950s and 1960s.

The 1936 heat wave also was an early clarion call for climate change. Clarence Mills, professor of experimental medicine at the University of Cincinnati, was at the forefront of the climate change conversation, though “climate change” as a term was rarely, if ever, used. But that summer in a column that he wrote for the Associated Press, Milles wrote of “irregularly rising world temperatures” and observed that “the rise has been proceeding with irregular relapses into colder periods, since about 1850. And as earth temperatures rise, summer heat and aridity grow more severe in portions of continents far inland from the source of moisture, such as the great plains area.”

A lasting change in the weather weighed on the public’s mind. This was the Dust Bowl era, after all, and the summer of 1934 had also been quite deadly. Throughout 1936, ordinary citizens kept asking meteorologists if the weather had changed permanently— and received a variety of answers, ranging from ‘it’s possible’ to ‘no way’.

Shrinking sleeves—and hemlines

The most durable change wrought by the heat wave of 1936, though, was in fashion. Everyone tends to think of the 1960s as the decade when American fashion truly became modern with young Americans’ tie-dye T-shirts and cut-off shorts. It’s certainly true that fashion dramatically shifted in those years. But the hippies of the ‘60s had parents growing up in the 1930s—and that was the decade when a lot of people, young and old, were pushing their peers to embrace wearing short sleeves and short pants in hot weather.

While the fashion changes in the 1960s were countercultural, the shifts in 1936 received establishment support. Dr. Herman N. Bundesen, president of the Chicago Board of Health, said in a newspaper interview that the public should wear just enough clothes to satisfy the police. He said that women were pretty “sensible” with their clothing choices, but the men were “very silly.” Bundesen complained: “Who but a man would wear four layers of starched clothes around his neck and then tie a wool rag under his chin, just to make sure he choked to death? Shorts and a soft shirt would be sensible dress for men in a heat wave.”

In Yonkers, on June 21, two reporters from the New York Daily News —hoping to test the city’s anti-shorts law—were arrested for wearing shorts in Yonkers after a hike. They were given the choice to leave the city or put on more appropriate clothing. They refused and were eventually brought forth before city judge Charles W. Boote. The judge was probably sweating underneath his robe when he made his decision on July 10, when the high was 102. Boote was sympathetic to the journalists, fining them $10 (adjusted for inflation about $240) but suspending the fines.

In the New York area, everybody had an opinion on whether shorts should be allowed. In the Bronx, people were hiking in shorts and halter tops freely. But about 40 miles away, in Westport, Connecticut, city officials discussed creating their own modesty law that would forbid shorts. In Farmingdale, a village of Long Island, the police chief declared that shorts were okay—unless citizens complained, and then he might have to rethink that.

But these discussions were happening all over the country, in backyards, parks, the workplace and even in church, where a young woman on Long Island made headlines for being ejected by a priest for not being appropriately covered up. In Covington, Kentucky, police officers were told to cite any teenage girls or women dressed in shorts and halter tops for indecent exposure. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, when a business owner allowed his male employees to wear shorts in the store, he confided to the Detroit Free Press that he was worried about the public reaction and was relieved that nobody seemed to object. There were also heated arguments over whether to ban nudist colonies, which first appeared in the United States in 1931 and were quickly gaining favor, especially during a summer when everyone wanted to take their clothes off.

A forgotten summer

Eventually, fall arrived, and the temperature ticked down, and cooler heads somewhat prevailed. In 1937, the anti-shorts law in Yonkers was overturned, and while T-shirts and shorts were more broadly accepted, at least with some people, the hats, gloves and layers generally stayed on. Time passed, the nation entered WWII, and people began to forget about fighting about climate change and arguing for a new wardrobe, until the 1960s, when once again, a generation tired of wearing gloves, hats, and layers of clothing said enough is enough—and this time, the clothes stayed off. Meanwhile, the heat wave became relegated to the occasional news story in the summer when old-timers would say, “You think this is hot? You should have been here back in 1936.”

But the 1936 heat wave shouldn’t be forgotten. There have been a lot of extreme weather events in American history. Floods like Johnstown (1889). Hurricanes like Galveston (1900) and Katrina (2005). The 1978 blizzard. The summer of 1936 belongs on that list and deserves to come out of the shadows and back into the sunlight. Because maybe if we remembered our hot sweaty past a little more, we might do more to fix our planet and avoid an even hotter, sweaty future. But if not, at least we’ll be comfortable in T-shirts and shorts.

Geoff Williams is the author of the new book, The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America. He is a freelance journalist in Loveland, Ohio, and the author of several books, including C.C. Pyle’s Amazing Foot RaceandWashed Away.

News about the heat wave in the UK (26 June 2026)

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European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say (The Guardian)

Study also finds high humidity means people in hundreds of cities are enduring their worst ever heat stress

Original article

Damian Carrington – Environment editor

Fri 26 Jun 2026 05.00 BST

The heatwave scorching western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever and is only possible due to the climate crisis driven by fossil fuel burning, scientists have said.

Almost half of Europe’s 850 largest cities are also enduring their worst ever heat stress, a combination of temperature and humidity, they found. Muggier conditions mean sweating is less effective at cooling the body, making heatwaves even more dangerous.

The analysis comes as the UK recorded its hottest ever June temperature on Thursday, 36.7C (98.06F) in Somerset, and much of western Europe recorded a sharp rise in medical emergencies, including some deaths.

In summer 2022, more than 60,000 people died due to heat in Europe. The statistical analysis needed to assess the impact of the current heatwave will take time to complete. Nonetheless, the heatwave is certain to exact a heavy toll and is also disrupting lives and livelihoods, with schools closed, hospitals struggling and rail and air journeys cancelled across the continent.

The new analysis by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium shows how rapidly extreme heat is worsening as carbon pollution continues to pile up in the atmosphere. As recently as 2003, a heatwave like the current one in Europe would have been 2C cooler due to the lower level of global heating at the time. In 1976, another famous heatwave year, it would have been 3.5C cooler.

The sweltering night-time temperatures currently harming people’s sleep are about 100 times more likely today than in 2003. The scientists warned that without urgent climate action, future heat conditions would get even more extreme and the current summer could seem relatively cool in retrospect.

“This is the most severe and widespread heatwave to have ever affected this large a region of Europe,” said Dr Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather research associate at Imperial College London and part of the WWA team. “We found that in the last 50 years, during which time the planet has warmed by 1.1C, the chance of a heatwave like this has changed immensely. This event would not have been possible in June without climate change. But do we expect this to be a cool summer going forward? That’s absolutely the case.”

He said many capital cities were experiencing not only their hottest recorded three-day period in June but the hottest three-day period at any time of year. At least 100 million people in Europe were expected to face temperatures above 35C on Thursday.

The scientists used wet bulb globe temperatures to assess the additional impact of high humidity. “It accounts for the ability of the human body to cool itself down. With the worst conditions ever experienced in 45% of cities over 50,000 people, the health impacts of this heatwave are likely to be extremely high,” Keeping said. “The speed of change is startling.”

Commenting on the WWA analysis, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said: “Climate change is running rampant, caused by the world’s addiction to burning coal, oil and gas. But the solutions are equally clear: a faster shift to clean energy – which is now much cheaper than fossil fuels – as well as protecting forests and building climate resilience.”

The WWA team used both observed and reliable forecast temperature data to analyse the hottest three-day period across a large area of western Europe, which is sitting under a “heat dome”. Using peer-reviewed methods, they found unequivocally that climate change was the driving force behind the severity of the heat.

They ruled out natural variability of the weather, in particular any influence from the El Niño event that has begun in the Pacific Ocean. The current weather pattern, a blocked high-pressure system trapping hot air over Europe and drawing warm air up from the Sahara, is not unusual in summer, the scientists said. Instead, the level of heat has been supercharged by global heating.

Carolina Pereira Marghidan, of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said: “After the devastating 2003 heatwave in Europe, many countries invested in early warning systems and action plans. Research shows that those have saved many lives, but it’s not enough.”

Heatwave Britain must do more to prepare for this scorching new normal (The Independent)

Editorial: As the UK swelters and June temperature records tumble, the government must redouble its investment in resilience policies that meet the future rather than ignore it

Friday 26 June 2026 11:56 BST

Original article

The “red alerts” issued by the Meteorological Office are rare, serious, and speak just as much to the climate crisis facing planet Earth as they do to the immediate risks to human health in Britain.

Perhaps it is the heat making the more vocal climate-change deniers dismiss the sweltering evidence before them, but against the backdrop of these record-breaking temperatures, their claims that “it’s just weather” appear in the worst of taste, and dangerous with it.

Temperatures approaching 40C in June are not normal. But they are increasingly frequent. So are extraordinarily wet winters. The reality of climate change from global warming, and the danger that it will accelerate into an unpredictable and catastrophic cycle by the middle of the century, should be treated with the urgency the moment demands.

In countries such as Britain, built on the perfectly natural presumption of a permanently temperate climate, there is an all too obvious need to increase resilience, from railway tracks to the foundations of buildings and flood defences.

A few years ago, this position was common ground. During his recent, almost valedictory appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer bemoaned the loss of national purpose in restraining greenhouse gas emissions and pursuing the target of a net zero UK economy by 2050. After all, for all his fatal flaws, Boris Johnson accepted the science and the need for action at successive Cop summits, and it was Theresa May who put the net zero target into law.

Now Kemi Badenoch calls herself a “net zero sceptic” – rather too close to flat-Earthism for a serious politician. Still worse is the fracturing of the international consensus by an anti-science elite: Donald Trump’s inexplicable insistence that climate change is a “hoax” will be his true legacy to future generations.

Under the pressure of the cost of living crisis, strained public finances, and the frankly malign influence of the fossil-fuel lobby on British politics, the public and politicians alike have found more immediate, quotidian matters to fret about. This approach is perfectly understandable, but deeply flawed. Climate change, with its costly consequences for every nation and every human being, is an inconvenient truth, and an issue that should transcend all others.

In fact, humanity cannot afford to ignore the fact that renewable sources – alongside a role for nuclear power – can produce cheap, plentiful and clean energy. They will have to be adopted in any case, because fossil fuels are a finite resource, carry unacceptable geopolitical risks, and will so alter life on Earth as to render it almost unrecognisable, just as the weather is now. The drive to net zero is not a burden or an obstacle to higher standards of living, but the way to achieve hitherto unknown prosperity – especially if the voracious appetite for energy of the AI data centres can be satisfied without engendering irreversible climate change.

Paying for the massive investment in green power has always been the issue, but rarely is it set against the cost of doing nothing – crop failure, buildings collapsing from subsidence, increased incidence of earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, widespread disruption to transport and industry, and the flows of humans that will inevitably follow from the desertification of sub-Saharan Africa and water shortages across the equatorial regions.

What would the loss of pollinating insects and the rainforests do to our way of life? We know that it would not be cheap, or even possible, to fix.

Even if it is practically impossible to reverse climate change, we can still limit it. Some imaginative solutions will need to be found. How, for example, to discourage people from installing central heating systems – the wrong kind of resilience when powered in part by burning natural gas, thus creating a vicious cycle.

Could we reform school term times, which still revolve around the long-gone need to get the harvest in? Are there novel ways to bolster flood defences, both at the riverside and at the coast? Can we mandate the installation of new railway tracks that are less susceptible to buckling? What can the insurance sector do to help people affected by subsidence – especially as the UK has such an old housing stock? Must we shut motorways for hours after an accident, when people then have little access to water and shade?

The prime minister is right to have set up Cobra meetings to monitor the situation, but he, or more likely his successor, should also work on the ways in which we can protect lives – and the economy – from a hotter, damper future. And of course, the drive for net zero has to go on, because doing nothing cannot be an option.

Heat waves mess with your brain. Scientists are trying to figure out why. (MIT Technology Review)

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Children and people with mental health disorders are especially vulnerable.

technologyreview.com

Original article

Jessica Hamzelou

June 26, 2026

It’s been hot in London this week. Really hot. A dangerous heat wave has hit Western Europe. Yesterday, the UK recorded its highest ever June temperature at 36.1 °C (about 97 °F). But as the weather app on my phone confirmed, it felt like 39 °C.

It’s frightening that we are seeing such temperatures in the UK in June. According to the Met Office, the country’s national weather and climate service, June temperatures peaked at an average 19 °C (66 °F) in England between 1991 and 2020. Across Europe, the heat wave is likely to cause thousands of deaths. There will be other awful consequences for agriculture, infrastructure, and the health system.

But this week I want to look at what the heat does to our minds and brains. Personally, I’ve found it almost impossible to think straight. The heat is distracting and my mind is foggy. I dread to think about the conditions of people who work outdoors, in even hotter regions.

It’s not just exhaustion and confusion. The effects of heat on the brain can be deadly. And researchers are still trying to figure out why.

Studies have confirmed that as temperatures rise, people seem to get more irritable and more violent. Most of these studies are based on associations, though. It’s difficult to directly study how a heat wave might affect our thinking, says Catherine Thompson, a cognitive psychologist at Liverpool Hope University. 

She has been studying the effects of extreme heat on firefighters instead. It’s easier to measure people’s cognitive skills before and after they undergo scheduled training that involves entering a burning building.  

It’s early days, but the team found that firefighters found it harder to focus and control their attention immediately after heat exposure—something people in heat waves can empathize with, I’m sure. 

The firefighters’ skills returned to normal after 20 minutes or so of cooling down. But they’d experienced just 15 minutes of intense heat exposure. Thompson doesn’t know what the effects of living through a days-long heat wave might be—or how long they’ll last. Figuring that out might involve shipping cognitive test kits to thousands of people during the few days’ notice of an impending heat wave. “My guess [is] that no one’s done it because it’s just so difficult to do,” says Thompson. 

Still, researchers can learn about some of the impacts of heat waves through studies after the fact. And those studies suggest that the heat seems to have more disastrous outcomes for people with mental-health disorders. 

Those outcomes become apparent when temperatures rise above what is considered typical for a given region. “There seems to be a correlation where the hotter it gets, especially during the hottest times of the year, the worse the mental-health outcomes,” says Joshua Wortzel, who directs the Heat-Mind Lab at Hartford HealthCare in Connecticut.

In a study published in 2023, Emma Lawrence at the University of Oxford, who studies the effect of climate change on mental health, and her colleagues reviewed the evidence linking mental-health outcomes to ambient outdoor temperatures. They found that during heat waves, there was a 9.7% increase in the rate of hospital admissions for people with such conditions. 

“People who live with mental-health conditions are among the most susceptible to the physical impacts of heat,” says Lawrence. People with schizophrenia were found to have been three times more likely to die during the record-breaking heat wave that affected Canada in 2021, for example.

In order to protect people, we need a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying these effects. After all, a lot of things change when it’s very, very hot. Some people may end up stuck indoors, avoiding outdoor play and exercise, and it can be difficult to get a good night of sleep, for example. Sleep, socializing, and exercise are all really important for our mental health. 

But whether unusual heat does something specific to our brains is, as Wortzel puts it, “the million-dollar question.”

Research in lab animals suggests that excessive heat can alter the way chemical signals work in our brain. The levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin, for example, seem to increase when rats and mice are exposed to high temperatures, according to multiple studies. The heat may also interfere with the way networks in our brains communicate with each other. It might affect the way oxygen reaches our brain cells.

“There are so many biological reasons why brains may be negatively affected by heat,” says Wortzel.

Emerging research suggests that for whatever reason, children and young people are among the most vulnerable. In research published earlier this week, Wortzel and his colleagues saw a 2.97% increase in the suicide rate among people in the US aged 15 to 24 for every 1 °C increase in average monthly temperature. That’s more than double the increase seen in people over the age of 24 (which is concerning in its own right).

Other work hints that heat exposure might have long-term consequences for children’s brain development. Babies who were exposed to either extreme heat or cold appeared to have altered white matter by the time they were nine to 12 years old—although it’s not clear how these impacts might affect an individual child.

“It seems that extreme temperature exposure for very young children may affect their brain development,” says Lawrence, who spoke to me from Oxford. She was meant to be in London for Climate Action Week, but her event, which focused on extreme heat, ended up being canceled … owing to the extreme heat.

We are living through the effects of climate change. And that brings a new urgency to the question of how heat affects our brains. Children born in 2020 are predicted to experience around seven times the number of heat waves their grandparents did, says Lawrance. “[We] need to be serious about adapting to a warming world.”

One day of extreme heat tied to 3,400 excess deaths in India, nearly 30,000 over five days: study (Carbon Brief)

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Original article

June 2, 2026

Priyanjali Narayan, Hindustan Times

A single day of extreme heat in India is associated with an estimated 3,400 excess deaths, while a heatwave lasting five consecutive days could lead to around 30,000 additional deaths, according to a study covered by the Hindustan Times. The newspaper explains that University of California, Berkeley researchers adapted findings from a multi-city study of heat-related deaths in 10 Indian cities and applied them to entire districts. India Today notes that these numbers are significant because official government counts are so low – “sometimes just a few hundred in a bad season, because many heat-related deaths are not labelled as such”. The researchers tell the Wire that their estimates are likely still “conservative”. The news outlet says “such evidence‑based estimates for heat can help us argue for investment in heat‑resilient infrastructure, systems and processes”. 

BBC News reports from Banda, Uttar Pradesh, a region that was the hottest place in India in May, reaching 47-48C. The outlet notes that, according to the new study, Uttar Pradesh alone could account for more than 8,000 excess deaths during a severe five-day heatwave.

MORE ON EXTREME HEAT

  • A Guardian article explores how “cool roofs” with reflective paint could “help millions avoid deadly heat” in Africa.
  • The Hong Kong Free Press reports on NGO calls for Hong Kong to strengthen its climate adaptation policies, “as the city is expected to endure an extremely hot summer this year”.
  • The Independent reports that invasive Asian hornet populations are “expected to soar as the UK experiences unusually hot weather”.

One day of extreme heat tied to 3,400 excess deaths in India, nearly 30,000 over five days: Study (Hindustan Times)

Temperatures have remained above 45 degrees Celsius in parts of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in recent days.

Original article

Updated on: May 29, 2026 4:42 PM IST

Written by Priyanjali Narayan

A day of extreme heat is associated with an estimated 3,400 excess deaths across India, while a heatwave lasting five consecutive days could lead to nearly 30,000 additional deaths, according to a new study.

Women cover themselves with scarf to beat the heat, in New Delhi on Thursday. (Jitender Gupta)
Women cover themselves with scarf to beat the heat, in New Delhi on Thursday. (Jitender Gupta)

The research, conducted by Piyush Narang and Ashok Gadgil of the India Energy and Climate Center at the University of California Berkeley, sought to address the lack of accessible district-level data on heatwave-related mortality in India, according to news agency PTI.

Also Read | ‘Extreme heat in India, a result of worsening climate change’

Multi-city finding of heat-related deaths

To estimate the impact nationwide, the researchers adapted findings from a multi-city study of heat-related deaths across 10 Indian cities and applied them to districts across the country.

Excess deaths refer to the number of deaths occurring above what would normally be expected based on historical trends.

Published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Health, the study combined district-level mortality data from the Civil Registration System with 2024 population projections to estimate deaths linked to one-day and five-day heatwave events.

Also Read | Brutal June, above-normal heat wave days, rain forecast cut further: Key IMD projections

3,400 deaths nationally, 30,000 in five-days

“We estimate that a single day of extreme heat causes approximately 3,400 excess deaths nationally; a five-day heatwave causes nearly 30,000,” the authors wrote.

The findings come as heatwave to severe heatwave conditions continue across northern, central and eastern India.

Temperatures have remained above 45 degrees Celsius in parts of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in recent days.

What areas were impacted most?

The analysis found that Uttar Pradesh alone could account for around 8,100 excess deaths during a five-day heatwave. Districts including Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Surat were projected to record more than 250 excess deaths each during a single heatwave event.

Researchers also identified a significant mismatch between mortality burden and economic capacity. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat together accounted for 66 per cent of the country’s projected excess deaths during a five-day heatwave, despite contributing only 29 per cent of India’s GDP.

The researchers said the findings have important implications for India’s heat adaptation and resilience planning.

“The 2.3× GDP disproportion documented here provides a quantitative basis for arguing that federal adaptation investment, including funding under the National Disaster Management Authority and the National Action Plan on Climate Change, should be weighted toward high-burden, low-GDP states rather than allocated in proportion to population or administrative capacity,” they wrote.

100 most vulnerable districts

The study also found that the 100 most vulnerable districts, home to nearly one-third of India’s population, accounted for 44 per cent of projected excess deaths during a five-day heatwave.

Further, “heatwave mortality risk is not merely proportional to population size but is structurally concentrated in states with lower economic output (which are) precisely those with the least fiscal capacity to invest in adaptation,” the authors said.

They added that the district-level estimates are consistent with a growing body of epidemiological and modelling evidence indicating that South Asia, particularly India, faces heightened vulnerability to heat-related deaths.

(With PTI inputs)

India heatwave kills over 100 in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana as power, health systems strain (Carbon Brief)

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Original article

May 27, 2026

Nithin Belle, Khaleej Times

Khaleej Times reports that more than 100 people have died “following the intense heatwave” in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. It adds that “[m]ore than a dozen districts saw temperatures above 45C” in Andhra Pradesh, with temperatures “soar[ing]” over 48C in its East and West Godavari regions. According to ETV Bharat, Telangana’s Warangal registered 23 heat deaths, the highest in the region. While national crime record data says Telangana recorded 116 heat deaths in 2024, the state’s 2026 heatwave action plan “places the deaths at just 10 for the same period”, according to the New Indian Express, sparking concern that “the true human cost of extreme heat may remain invisible in official records”. In the neighbouring eastern state of Odisha, the state government confirmed that three people died of sunstroke, reports the New Indian Express.

Meanwhile, doctors tell the Independent that health impacts are “getting worse” because of record night-time temperatures, with Delhi recording “its warmest May night in almost 14 years” this week. As temperatures approach 46C in the capital today, authorities warn that heatwave conditions will continue over large parts of central and north-western India, says the Indian Express. According to Down to Earth, the current heatwave is pushing India’s power grid into “uncharted territory”, with “residential cooling demand now overtaking industrial demand growth in several regions”. An opinion piece in the Hindustan Times by health researchers argues that heat mortality is not caused by “temperature alone”, but “infrastructure design failure” and “severely limited access to cooling”.

UK and Europe shatter heat records in ‘mind-boggling’ May (Carbon Brief)

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Original article

May 27, 2026

Laura Hughes and Attracta Mooney, Financial Times

The UK and Europe have experienced “mind-boggling” new temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reports the Financial Times. The extreme heat has been linked to “about a dozen” deaths across the region, the newspaper says, adding: “Temperatures hit 35.1C in London on Tuesday, breaching the record of 34.8C set the previous day, according to provisional readings from the UK’s Met Office. This was 2C higher than the previous May record set in 1944. A new record was also set in Ireland on Tuesday, and agencies said France could reach new highs under a so-called heat dome where warm air from northern Africa is trapped by a high-pressure system over western Europe.” The FT quotes Prof Peter Thorne, director ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University, who calls the temperatures “mind-boggling crazy”.

The Associated Press reports that the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. It adds that London experienced a “rare ‘tropical night’, defined as one in which the temperature does not fall below 20C”. It adds: “Records also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s southwest and widely remained above 20C at night.” France’s national weather service, Météo-France, said that its “heat dome” was “producing temperatures more than 10C above what is usual for this time of year”, according to the newswire. ABC News says the heatwave has been linked to 11 deaths in the UK and France. This includes seven people in France, five of whom died by drowning and two who suffered heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, says the Guardian. The Independent reports that four teenagers also drowned in the UK amid the record heat. France24 reports that “restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy”. CNN adds that, in the UK, “a wildfire broke out near Arthur’s Seat, a hill in Edinburgh, Scotland, and hundreds of properties in south-east England were left without water as demand spiked”.

Several publications look into why Europe is experiencing a record heatwave and the links to climate change. BBC News says: “The immediate cause of the heatwave is a ‘heat dome’ – where an area of high pressure gets ‘stuck’ over Europe, trapping warm air underneath. But scientists have little doubt that human-caused climate change – largely the result of the burning of coal, oil and gas – has supercharged the heat.” Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter, tells BBC News: “When we have a heatwave it’s happening more severely, because it’s on top of a warming climate. I’ve been a climate scientist for 33 years and we’re seeing exactly the kinds of things that we were warning back then… [although] these records are perhaps more extreme and coming sooner than we had expected.” The Independent reports that the heatwave “has the fingerprints of climate change all over it”. The Guardian examines why heat can be a “silent killer”. Sky News has a video on whether the UK can expect more record-smashing heat. Inside Climate News and Scientific American also cover the climate links.

India’s first ‘heat lounges’ (Carbon Brief)

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Chennai’s gig workers race against the heat

Aruna Chandrasekhar

Original post

15.05.2026 | 2:50pm

This week, Carbon Brief visits one of India’s first air-conditioned lounges designed to help gig workers deal with extreme heat.

An air-conditioned lounge for gig workers in Chennai’s T Nagar shopping district. Credit: Ishan Tankha / Scorched
An air-conditioned lounge for gig workers in Chennai’s T Nagar shopping district. Credit: Ishan Tankha / Scorched

On a single day in late April, 20 of the world’s hottest cities were all in India.

Chennai was not on the list this time, but is no stranger to high temperatures. In the south-eastern coastal capital of Tamil Nadu, extreme humidity and heat are inescapable facts of life.

“The heat is by no means manageable, but we have no choice but to deal with it,” said Mohammed S, a 29-year-old grocery platform delivery worker, speaking to Carbon Brief. 

Last year, Chennai became India’s first ever city to roll out air-conditioned lounges for millions of gig workers, like Mohammed, navigating India’s increasingly hotter cities. 

Lounge access

In the dense shopping district of T Nagar – recognised as an “urban heat island” – studded with silk sari and jewellery shops, an unassuming oblong container-like structure stands out.

Gig workers leave their slippers outside the lounge. Credit: Ishan Tankha / Scorched
Gig workers leave their slippers outside the lounge. Credit: Ishan Tankha / Scorched

Through the building’s tinted windows, workers wearing synthetic jerseys emblazoned with food delivery app logos are stretched out on wooden benches meant to seat 25 people. 

The lounge has charging points for phones, a water cooler and a unisex toilet. It might not seem like much, but workers tell Carbon Brief that it has made a “huge difference” to their lives – even on a day when the air conditioner stopped working. 

“Before this, life was very difficult,” said Mohammed. He continued:

“We would park our [electric] bikes and try to find a tree to sleep under, stop for tea and tea shop owners would tell us we couldn’t sit there for more than 10 minutes, try to rest in a building’s stairwell and be chased away, then try to find shade under a flyover. Now we can sit in the AC and avoid the worst of the heat.”

Dinesh, 27, said his day starts at dawn before the sun is up, picking up packages from companies in north Chennai – another critical heat hotspot.

For the next seven hours, there is no “off point” or breaks for Dinesh as apps rush deliveries. 

Some of Chennai’s gig workers told Carbon Brief they try to avoid the worst of afternoon temperatures from noon to 3pm, but for many – especially migrant workers – sitting back in the lounge is not a choice they can afford. One of them explained:

“If you don’t have cash to cover your bills or have to send money back home, you head out into the heat for a 12-hour shift and hope for the best.”

Dinesh checks his orders in the gig worker’s lounge. Credit: Ishan Tankha / Scorched
Dinesh checks his orders in the gig worker’s lounge. Credit: Ishan Tankha / Scorched

Feeling ‘gear’

In Chennai, heat might be normalised, but it has its own vocabulary. Speaking to Carbon Brief, the city’s gig workers, auto rickshaw drivers and fish sellers used an all-encompassing term – “gear” – to describe their symptoms, including dizziness, exhaustion and nausea. 

Last summer, researchers offered Delhi’s gig workers a Rs 200 (roughly £2) cash transfer on the first day of a heatwave, to provide them with a means to achieve “real-time” adaptation to heat risk. Workers who received a cash transfer reported fewer heat-related symptoms, according to the study.  

Asked if they would accept similar incentives to stay home on 40C days, workers in the T Nagar lounge expressed disbelief. Dinesh – who also trains technicians on how to repair air conditioners to support his income – told Carbon Brief:

“They [the apps] offer us incentives to go out in the heat when there are fewer riders.” 

Barring a few, none of the dozens of outdoor workers Carbon Brief spoke to had an air conditioner at home or in their hostels, making the lounge the only place they could cool down. 

Dos 800 atendimentos no último dia de Sapucaí, 300 foram pelo calor (Veja Rio)

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vejario.abril.com.br

Por Daniela, 18 fev 2026, 14h00. Coluna Lu Lacerda.

Artigo original

Sapucaí: as vendas para o Carnaval Rio 2026 abrem nos dias 9 e 13 de julho.

Na última noite do Grupo Especial, nessa terça (17/02), foram 800 atendimentos médicos nos seis postos da Secretaria Municipal de Saúde (SMS) instalados no Sambódromo. Desses, mais de 300 foram causados pelo calor. E olha que os termômetros marcavam “apenas” 28°C na região da Apoteose – mas imaginem usando uma fantasia de 20 kg, plumas, paetês, luz de refletores e muito calor humano misturado ao álcool?

Entre as principais ocorrências, além da turma derretida, estão a descompensação de doenças crônicas, picos de pressão, mal-estar e fadiga por esforço, dor de cabeça, cortes, entorses, lesões ortopédicas, contusões e intoxicação por consumo exagerado de bebidas alcoólicas.

No balanço geral de todos os dias de desfile, foram 2.843 atendimentos. Destes, 167 precisaram ser encaminhados para hospitais da rede. Durante a passagem de algumas escolas, foi possível ver o resgate de integrantes na pista e de foliões nas frisas e arquibancadas.

Fevereiro no Rio é mistura de loteria climática com teste de sobrevivência, a cidade já viveu carnaval debaixo d’água e sob calor escaldante. Segundo pesquisas sobre aquecimento global, não há Fundação Cacique Cobra Coral que resolva contrato com o clima em definitivo. Num futuro não muito distante, o carnaval vai precisar mudar o calendário?

O biólogo Mario Moscatelli diz: “A conta climática é imprevisível, e estamos longe de entender perfeitamente como o sistema funciona. O Rio não consegue resolver nem os velhos problemas estruturais, quanto mais se preparar para os novos. Ondas de calor estão cada vez mais frequentes, enchentes seguem devastadoras, e a perda de biodiversidade — apontada por especialistas como a sexta extinção em massa — já é uma realidade”.

Ele lembra ainda que ano de eleição também é ano de escolha: “A forma de mudar esse ecocídio global passa pelos votos de pessoas mais antenadas com a questão ambiental e menos com as páginas policiais relacionadas a superfaturamentos, desvios de verbas, criação de mais facilidades para as castas públicas e por aí vai. Quem não for 300% competente na gestão dessa nova realidade vai pagar um preço muito alto, tanto do ponto de vista de perdas materiais, como humanas e ambientais. Acabou a fase da improvisação”.

Temperaturas do verão vão superar as de 2014, diz instituto (O Globo)

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JC, 5070, 24 de novembro de 2014

Aumento seria de até 2 graus Celsius; fenômeno El Niño pode provocar mais chuvas

Daqui a um mês começa a estação mais popular do Rio. E o verão de 2015 não deve dar trégua para quem detesta calor. De acordo com o Instituto Climatempo, o primeiro bimestre do ano que vem terá temperaturas ainda mais elevadas do que as registradas no ano passado. Em janeiro, a média será de 32ºC. Em fevereiro, 36ºC. Em 2014, a média não superou os 34ºC.

Leia mais sobre esse assunto em: http://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/ciencia/temperaturas-do-verao-vao-superar-as-de-2014-diz-instituto-14635118#ixzz3K03TB9r8

(Renato Grandelle, com Agências Internacionais / O Globo)