BENI MELLAL, Morocco (AP) — In the sweltering heat of Morocco’s Middle Atlas Mountains, people were sleeping on rooftops. Hana Ohbour needed shelter, too, but outside the hospital she was waiting for her cousin, who has diabetes and was in a room without air conditioning.
On Wednesday, 21 heat-related deaths were recorded at the main hospital in Beni Mellal, where temperatures soared to 48.3 degrees (118.9 degrees Fahrenheit) in an area of 575,000 people, most of whom lack air conditioning.
“We have no money and we have no choice,” said Ohbour, a 31-year-old unemployed woman from Kasba Tadla, a warmer city that some experts say is among the hottest on Earth.
Regional Health Director Kamal Al-Yansli said in a statement that “most of the deaths were among those with chronic diseases and the elderly, as the high temperatures contributed to the deterioration of their health and led to their death.”
This is life and death in the heat.
Heatstroke patients receive treatment at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, Thursday, July 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
As the Earth’s temperature rose over the course of a week, four of the hottest days everThe world focused on cold, hard numbers that showed the average daily temperature of the entire planet.
But the reading is 17.16°C (62.8°F). Recorded on Monday This book does not tell us how sticky any particular area became at the height of sunshine and humidity. Nor does the thermometer tell us the story of the warmth that did not disappear at night so that people could sleep.
Records are about statistics and recording results. But people don’t feel data. They feel heat.
“We don’t need scientists to tell us what the temperature is outside because that’s what our body tells us right away,” said Humayun Saeed, a 35-year-old roadside fruit vendor in Pakistan’s cultural capital Lahore.
A man walks on a hot summer day in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Thursday, July 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)
Saeed had to go to the hospital twice in June due to heat stroke.
“The situation is much better now,” Saeed said. “It was not easy to work in May and June because of the heat wave, but I used to avoid walking in the morning, and I may resume it in August when the temperatures drop further.”
The weather was so hot that it made Delia, a 38-year-old pregnant woman standing outside a train station in Bucharest, Romania, even more uncomfortable. The day was so hot that she felt sleepy. With no air conditioning at night, she considered sleeping in her car like a friend had done.
“I noticed a big spike in my temperature,” said Delia, who would only give her first name. “I think it was the same for everyone. I felt it more because I was pregnant. But I think it wasn’t just me. Everyone really felt it.”
Karen Bumbaco, a self-described weather expert, was in her element, but then it became too much as Seattle saw day after day of above-normal heat.
“I love science. I love weather. I’ve loved it since I was a little kid,” said Bombaco, the deputy climatologist for Washington state. “It’s fun to see daily records being broken… but in recent years just living in these conditions and feeling the heat on a daily basis has become more miserable.”
“Like this last period we had, I wasn’t sleeping well. I don’t have air conditioning in my house,” Bumbaco said. “I would watch the thermostat every morning and it would be a little warmer than the previous warm morning. It was just a buildup of heat in the house and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.”
For climate scientists around the world, what was once an academic exercise in climate change has had a direct impact on their lives.
“I was crunching these numbers from the cool of my office, but the heat started to affect me too, causing sleepless nights due to warmer urban temperatures,” said Roxy Mathew Cole, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, Maharashtra, which normally has a relatively mild climate.
“My children come home from school during peak hours exhausted,” says Cole. “Last month, one of my colleagues’ mother died of heat stroke in northern India.”
Philip Mott, a climate scientist and dean of the graduate school at Oregon State University, moved to California’s Central Valley in middle school, where summer temperatures can exceed 10 degrees.
“I quickly realized that I didn’t like the hot, dry climate,” Moti said. “That’s why I moved to the Northwest.”
For decades, Moti has worked on climate issues from the comfort of Oregon, where people feared that with global warming the Northwest “would be the last nice place to live in the United States and everyone would move here and we would have an overpopulation problem.”
But the area was hit by horrific fires in 2020 and a deadly heatwave in 2021, prompting some people to flee what was supposed to be a climate refuge.
In the second week of July, the temperature reached 104 degrees (40 degrees Celsius). As a member of the main rowing club, Moti trains in the water on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but this week they decided to just swim in the river in tubes.
In Boise, Idaho, tubing in temperatures ranging from 99 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit (37 to 42 degrees Celsius) for 17 days has become so popular that there are 30-minute to hour-long waits to get in the water, according to John Tullius, general manager of Boise River Raft & Tube.
“I think the numbers have been record numbers for the last 10 days in a row,” Tullius said, adding that he was concerned about his outdoor workers, especially the physical burden on those picking up rafts at the end of a trip.
He created a special canopy for them, added more workers to lighten the load and encourage them to stay hydrated.
In Denver City Park, the swan-shaped pedal boat rental shop isn’t too crowded because it’s so hot outside and those brave souls who do get out have to sit on heated fiberglass seats.
There isn’t much shade for the workers, “but we hide in our little hut,” said employee Dominic Prado, 23. “We also have a very strong fan up there that I like to pull my shirt up over just to cool myself down.”
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Bornstein reported from Washington, and Metz from Beni Mellal, Morocco. Additional reporting by Munir Ahmed from Lahore, Pakistan; Nikolai Dumitrache from Bucharest, Romania; Rebecca Boone from Boise, Idaho; and Brittany Peterson from Denver.
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Follow Seth Borenstein and Sam Metz on X on @Boren Bears And @mitzsam.
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