‘World must be ready for more intense heatwaves’

GENEVA: The world should get ready to face increasingly intense heatwaves, the United Nations warned on Tuesday, as countries across the Northern Hemisphere reeled from soaring temperatures.

Health authorities have sounded the alarm from North America to Europe and Asia, urging people to stay hydrated and shelter from the burning sun, in a stark reminder of the effects of global warming.

“These events will continue to grow in intensity, and the world needs to prepare for more intense heatwaves,” John Nairn, a senior extreme heat adviser at the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told reporters. Heatwaves are among the deadliest natural hazards, with hundreds of thousands of people dying from preventable heat-related causes each year.

Nairn warned the health risk was growing rapidly, amid burgeoning urbanization, higher temperature extremes and aging populations.

In the short term, he said the recently-declared El Nino — a warming climate pattern that occurs every two to seven years — “is only expected to amplify the occurrence and intensity of extreme heat events.”

But regardless of El Nino, the trend is clear, Nairn said, pointing out that the number of simultaneous heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere had swelled six-fold since the 1980s.

“This trend shows no signs of decreasing,” he said, warning of heatwaves’ “quite serious impacts on human health and livelihoods.”