by BENI MELLAL, Morocco (AP) – In the relentless heat of Morocco’s Middle Atlas, people were sleeping on rooftops. Hanna Ouhbour also needed asylum, but she was outside the hospital waiting for her diabetic cousin who was in a room without air conditioning.
On Wednesday, there were 21 deaths due to heat at the main hospital of Beni Mellal where the temperature rose to 48.3 degrees (118.9 degrees Fahrenheit) about 575,000 people, and most were lacking air conditioning.
“We have no money and no choice,” said Ouhbour, a 31-year-old unemployed woman from Kasba Tadla, an even hotter city that some experts say is one of the hottest in the world.
“Most of the deaths were among people suffering from chronic diseases and the elderly, as the high temperatures worsened their health condition and led to their death,” Kamal Elyansli, the regional health director, said in a statement.
This is life and death in the heat.
As the Earth warmed through three weeks with four of the hottest days on record, the world focused on cold, hard numbers showing the average daily temperature for the entire planet.
But the reading of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.8 degrees Fahrenheit) recorded on Monday does not indicate how oppressively sticky any particular spot was at the peak of the sun and humidity. The thermometer does not tell the story of the heat that would not go away at night so that people could sleep.
The records are about statistics, keeping score. But people do not perceive data. They feel the heat.
“We don’t need any scientists to tell us what the temperature is outside because this is what our bodies tell us immediately,” said Humayun Saeeda 35-year-old roadside fruit vendor in Pakistan’s cultural capital, Lahore.
Saeed had to go to hospital twice in June due to heat stroke.
“The situation is much better now, because it was not easy to work in May and June because of the heat wave, but I am avoiding the morning walk,” said Saeed. “I can resume it in August when the temperature will go down further.”
The heat was making Delia, a 38-year-old pregnant woman outside Romania’s Bucharest train station, feel even more uncomfortable. The day was so hot and she was sleepy. With no air conditioning at night, she considered sleeping in her car as a friend.
“I have noticed a very large increase in temperature. I think it was the same for everyone. I felt it even more because I’m pregnant,” said Delia, who gave only her first name. “But I guess it wasn’t just me. Everyone really felt this.”
Self-described weather nerd Karin Bumbaco was in her element, but then it got a little too much when Seattle was day after day much warmer than normal.
“I love science. I love the weather. I’ve been a kid since I was a kid,” said Bumbaco, deputy state climatologist for Washington. “It’s great fun to see daily records broken. … But the last few years have just been living through it and feeling the heat getting worse every day.”
“Like this recent piece we had. I didn’t sleep very well. I don’t have AC at home,” said Bumbaco. “I was watching the thermostat every morning to be a little warmer than the previous hot morning. It was heating up the house and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.”
For climate scientists around the world, an academic exercise about climate change has hit us.
“I’m analyzing these numbers from the cool of my office, but the heat has affected me as well, causing sleepless nights due to warmer urban temperatures,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, scientist climate at the Indian Institute of Tropical. Meteorology in Pune, Maharashtra, which usually has a fairly mild climate.
“My kids come home from school during peak hours exhausted,” Koll said. “Last month one of my colleagues’ mothers died of heatstroke in northern India.”
Philip Mote, a climate scientist and dean of the graduate school at Oregon State University, moved the junior high to California’s Central Valley with its triple-digit summer heat.
“I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t like a hot, dry climate,” Mote said. “And that’s why I moved to the North West.”
For years, Mote worked on climate issues from the comfort of Oregon, where people feared that the Northwest would be “the last last place to live in the U.S. and everyone would move here and we’d be overpopulated .”
But nasty fires hit the region in 2020 and a deadly heat wave in 2021, forcing some people to flee what was supposed to be a climate haven.
In the second week of July, the temperature hit 104 degrees (40 Celsius). As a member of a masters rowing club, Mote practices on the water on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but this week they decided to float down the river in tubes.
In Boise, Idaho, tubing has been so popular in the heat that has hovered between 99 and 108 degrees Fahrenheit (37 to 42 degrees Celsius) for 17 days that there is a 30 minute to hour wait to get in the water, John said. Tullius. , general manager for Boise River Raft & Tube.
“I think it’s a record number for 10 days in a row,” Tullius said, adding that he worries about his outdoor workers, especially the physical toll on those who build rafts at the end of the trek.
He erected a special shade structure for them, added more workers to lighten the load and recommends keeping them hydrated.
In Denver City Park, the swan-shaped pedal boat rental shop isn’t that busy because it’s really hot outside and those brave souls who go outside have to sit on heated fiberglass seats.
There is not much shade for the workers, “but we hide in our little shack,” said employee Dominic Prado, 23. “We also have a very strong fan there that I like to lift my shirt over just to cool off . “
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Borenstein reported from Washington, Metz from Beni Mellal, 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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Follow Seth Borenstein and Sam Metz on X at @borenbears and @metzsam.
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