After three of Earth's hottest days ever measured, the United Nations called for a flurry of efforts to try to reduce the human toll from soaring and searing temperatures, calling it “an extreme heat epidemic.”
“If there is one thing that unites our divided world, it's that we're all increasingly feeling the heat,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday at a news conference where he highlighted that Monday was the hottest day on record, surpassing the mark set just a day earlier. “Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere.”
Nearly half a million people a year die worldwide from heat related deaths, far more than other weather extremes such as hurricanes, and this is likely an underestimate, a new report by 10 U.N. agencies said.
“Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic -- wilting under increasingly deadly heat waves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world," Guterres said. "That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit and halfway to boiling.”
The dire warnings came after a barely noticeable respite in back-to-back record global heat.
The European climate service Copernicus calculated that Tuesday’s global average temperature was 0.01 Celsius (0.01 Fahrenheit) lower than Monday's all-time high of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.8 degrees Fahrenheit), which was .06 degrees Celsius hotter (0.1 degrees Fahrenheit) than Sunday.
All three days were hotter than Earth’s previous hottest day in 2023.
“We are not prepared,” the U.N. report said.
Guterres urged countries of the world to adopt several proposals aimed at reducing heat deaths, starting with help to cool and care for the most vulnerable people — the poor, elderly, young and sick.
The U.N. also called for better heat wave warnings, expanding “passive cooling,” improved urban design, stronger protections for outside workers, as well as greater efforts to tackle human-caused climate change that's worsening weather extremes.
But officials said most work will have to be done by countries, with the U.N. offering aid and coordination, especially when it comes to beefing up weather warning systems.
If countries adopt the United Nations heat-fighting recommendations, “these measures could protect 3.5 billion people by 2050, while slashing emissions and saving consumers $1 trillion a year,” Guterres said, citing a U.N. Environment Programme estimate.
Better heat-health warning systems in 57 countries could save 98,314 lives per year, the report said, based on World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization estimates.
“Crippling heat is everywhere, but it doesn't affect everyone equally,” Guterres said. “Extreme heat amplifies inequality, inflames food insecurity and pushes people further into poverty.”
More than 1,300 people died during this year's annual Haj pilgrimage after walking in scorching heat.
Earlier this year, India's prolonged heatwaves resulted in the deaths of at least 100 people. However, health experts say heat deaths are likely undercounted in India and potentially other countries.
Last year, the United States had its most recorded heat deaths in more than 80 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The death certificates of more than 2,300 people mentioned excessive heat, including 874 deaths in Arizona.
Deadly heat is not new, but scientists say it has been amplified in scale, frequency and duration with climate change.
Extreme heat, wildfires, floods, droughts and ever more fierce hurricanes are symptoms and “we need to fight the disease,” Guterres said. “The disease is the madness of incinerating our only home. The disease is the addiction to fossil fuels. The disease is climate inaction.”
“Many things are being done, but too little, too late,” he said. “The problem is that climate change is running faster than all the measures that are now being put in place to fight it.”
Before July 3, 2023, the hottest day measured by Copernicus was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on August 13, 2016. In the last 13 months that mark has now been beaten 59 times, according to Copernicus.
Humanity is now “operating in a world that is already much warmer than it was before,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said.
“The steady drumbeat of hottest-day-ever records and near-records is concerning for three main reasons. The first is that heat is a killer. The second is that the health impacts of heat waves become much more serious when events persist. The third is that the hottest-day records this year are a surprise,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field.
Field said high temperatures usually occur during El Nino years — a natural warming of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather worldwide — but the last El Nino ended in April.
Field said these high temperatures “underscores the seriousness of the climate crisis."
“Unfortunately people are going to die and those deaths are preventable,” said Kristie Ebi, a public health and climate professor at the University of Washington. “Heat is called the silent killer for a reason. People often don’t know they’re in trouble with heat until it’s too late.”
“At some point, the accumulated heat internally becomes too much, then your cells and your organs start to warm up,” Ebi said.
The “big driver” of the current heat is greenhouse gas emissions, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Buontempo said. Those gases help trap heat, changing the energy balance between the heat coming in from the sun and that escaping Earth, meaning the planet retains more heat energy than before, he said.
Other factors include the warming of the Pacific by El Nino; the sun reaching its peak cycle of activity; an undersea volcano explosion; and air with fewer heat-reflecting particles because of marine fuel pollution regulations, experts said.
The last 13 months have all set heat records. The world’s oceans broke heat records for 15 months in a row and that water heat, along with an unusually warm Antarctica, are helping push temperatures to record level, Buontempo said.
Borenstein reported from Washington, D.C., Arasu from Bengaluru, India.
Follow Seth Borenstein at @borenbears and Sibi Arasu on X at @sibi123
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Children cool themselves off in a public fountain in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 25, 2024. A heat wave warning was issued in Seoul as temperatures soared 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit). (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Bathers cool off in the water while others sunbathe on a Barcelona beach, Spain, Wednesday, July 24, 2024. Several regions of Spain are under alert for high temperatures. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak.
The vaccination drive was launched after health officials confirmed the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, in a 10-month-old boy whose leg is now paralyzed. The nine-day campaign by the U.N. health agency and partners aims to vaccinate 640,000 children, an ambitious effort during a war that has destroyed Gaza's health care system and much of its infrastructure. The third phase of vaccinations is in the north.
Israel, meanwhile, kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate air raids. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least 10, while five people were killed in a strike on a house in western Nuseirat.
Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said a woman and her two children were killed in a strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij.
In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government. Israel's military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.
The war began when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry says more than 94,000 people have been wounded.
Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank. A dayslong military operation in Jenin left dozens of dead. “They (Israeli forces) besieged the area and brought in bulldozers. As you see, they destroyed the whole area," said a resident, Mahmoud Al Razi.
On Friday, a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were reported shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who also holds Turkish nationality, died after being shot in the head, two Palestinian doctors said. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she had posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot during a moment of calm following earlier clashes.
The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area.
Her family in a statement said that “given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate” and urged President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation. They called the recent university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and an advocate for human dignity.
Separately, Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire killed 13-year-old Bana Laboom in the village of Qaryout.
The Israeli military said an initial inquiry indicated that security forces had been deployed to disperse a riot involving Palestinian and Israeli civilians that “included mutual rock hurling.” Security forces fired shots in the air, it said.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, according to Palestinian health officials.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.
Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out negotiations by issuing new demands. Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by Biden in July.
Along the border with Lebanon, near-daily clashes continue between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese Civil Defense team that was fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. The blaze was sparked by a previous Israeli strike, the statement said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike.
Israel's military said some 45 rockets were fired at northern Israel in several barrages, many targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no injuries. The military later said its jets struck Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in the area of Qabrikha in southern Lebanon.
Magdy reported from Cairo and Jeffery from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Mourners carry the body of Palestinian girl Bana Bakr, 13, into the family house during her funeral in the West Bank village of Qaryut, south of Nablus, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Bakr was killed by Israeli fire, the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Mourners take the last look at the body of Palestinian girl Bana Bakr, 13, at the family house during her funeral in the West Bank village of Qaryut, south of Nablus, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Bakr was killed by Israeli fire, the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinian Barakat Jabr, 15, displays a photo of his sister Bana Bakr, 13, on his mobile phone in her bedroom at the family house, as he waits for her funeral, in the West Bank village of Qaryut, south of Nablus, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Bakr was killed by Israeli fire the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Palestinians gather around the body of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers while participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank, at the morgue of the Rafedia hospital, in the West Bank city of Nablus Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo)
Palestinians look at the body of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi at the hospital morgue in Nablus, West Bank, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Ezgi Eygi, 26, died after being shot in the head on Friday, Palestinian doctors said. Witnesses to the shooting said the was fatally shot by Israeli forces in a moment of calm after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the northern West Bank. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Palestinians carry the body of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi at the hospital morgue in Nablus, West Bank, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Ezgi Eygi, 26, died after being shot in the head on Friday, Palestinian doctors said. Witnesses to the shooting said the was fatally shot by Israeli forces in a moment of calm after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the northern West Bank. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Palestinian mourners gather around the covered bodies of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, and Bana Bakr, 13, at a morgue in Nablus, West Bank, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. Witnesses said Eygi, was fatally shot by Israeli forces in a moment of calm after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces near Nablus on Friday. Bakr was also killed by Israeli fire the Palestinian health ministry said, while the Israeli army said they were reviewing the incident which happened during clashes between Palestinians and Israeli nationals in an area south of Nablus. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
