Extreme Heat: The New Reality

In 2007, British director Danny Boyle released the sci-fi film Sunshine, which tells the story of a mission by the crew of the spaceship Icarus II, who set off with a giant nuclear bomb to reignite the dying Sun. One could wager that if Boyle were to film this in 2023-2024, the plot would be entirely different—the shuttle would likely be called Neptune, and instead of carrying a nuclear charge, it would be equipped with a giant tank of liquid nitrogen to cool down the blazing star and save Earth's population from abnormal heat.

Heatwaves, droughts, floods, and pandemics—none of us were prepared for such a future. However, it’s better to be forewarned about what lies ahead and how to make life somewhat bearable in these new realities.

“Not Just a Summer”

Meteorologists around the world had been warning since early 2024 that this would be “not just a summer.” Indeed, by the end of June, waves of extreme heat began to spread across the globe. For example, temperatures in California’s Death Valley reached +53.9°C, and the gambling capital of the US, Las Vegas, broke its all-time heat record at +48.9°C. Forty-degree heat dried out California, causing wildfires, while in Oregon, the first deaths from heatstroke were recorded. In Mexico and Central America, twenty days of heat led to drought, severe water shortages, and dozens of deaths.

Residents of African, European, and Asian countries suffered no less than their transatlantic counterparts. Due to the heat, numerous resorts in Greece and Northern Cyprus were closed, and the 50-degree heat recorded in India as early as mid-spring led to a failed tourist season. In Saudi Arabia, the heat resulted in a true tragedy—more than 1,000 people died during the pilgrimage to Mecca, where the temperature in the Great Mosque reached +51.8°C.

Source: GettyImages

Eastern European countries, including Ukraine, also became the epicentre of the temperature anomaly. From 10 July, these regions were covered by tropical air masses from Africa and the Middle East, with maximum temperatures exceeding +42-44°C, which is +10-12°C higher than the comparable figures from 1991-2020, as reported by Climatebook.

According to the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the hottest day on Earth in the past 80 years was recorded on 21 July 2024, with temperatures exceeding 17.16°C above the norm. This record didn’t last long and was broken on 22 July... and then on 23 July. And on 24 July. And on 25 July too.

Each of the past 13 months has been the hottest on record, with the average temperature at least 1.5°C higher than comparable figures from the early 20th century. Despite 2024 being one of the hottest summers on record, meteorologists predict that in the future, it might be considered one of the coolest, as temperatures are expected to continue rising.

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

With this “optimistic” title, a book by leading climate journalist Jeff Goodell was released in 2023, becoming a bestseller. The author, referencing expert opinions from global climatologists, particularly Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M University, predicts a bleak future for humanity—each subsequent year will become the hottest on record, eventually leading to a point where 2023, the year that marked the beginning of this new warming trend, will be considered one of the coolest years of the 21st century.

The most significant cause of warming, according to scientists, remains the hydrocarbon industry and the amount of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, which will eventually lead to a critical warming of 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times. Slowing down this process is possible through a transition to alternative energy sources (green, nuclear, etc.), but there is currently no technology to “cool” the planet again. Even if humanity drastically reduces CO2 emissions, the carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Until a method is found to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, Earth’s inhabitants will continue to suffer from heat and drought every year, notes Goodell.

Among other unpleasant surprises that the future holds, Goodell mentions the rapid melting of glaciers and permafrost, which will lead to partial desalination of the seas and oceans and a rise in global sea levels.

The Great Flood

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The phrase "after us, the flood" is no longer relevant, as we might witness the flood within our own lifetime. The observations and predictions of Jeff Goodell echo his previous work from 2017, The Water Will Come, in which he, drawing on myths like that of Atlantis, predicts an era of new great floods.

Every iceberg that breaks off the ice shelf, every additional degree of heat, will lead to increasingly high tides and a gradual, yet relentless, alteration of the coastline. Here, it’s worth recalling the dystopian sci-fi Waterworld with Kevin Costner, where the remnants of humanity drift across an endless ocean on rafts and old oil tankers in search of the last scraps of land, which, in that world, had become the highest mountain peaks. By the end of the 21st century, coastlines will be submerged, the contours of continents will change, and island nations may vanish entirely from both the political and physical maps of the world.

If you think that humanity’s troubles related to global warming end there, you are mistaken—Pandora's box still holds many "surprises," among which are new, yet-unknown-to-science epidemics.

Prehistoric Pandemic

In his book, Jeff Goodell does not overlook the epidemiological threat linked to both the melting of glaciers and intense solar activity.

Bacteria and viruses from the Ice Age, hibernating in cryogenic sleep within the permafrost, will finally awaken, have their morning coffee, and launch a new pandemic, compared to which COVID-19 will seem like a mild cold. The carriers of these ancient viruses will initially be wild animals migrating to cooler regions of the planet, then livestock, and finally, humans. It’s hard not to think of the now seemingly prophetic crime drama series Fortitude, where the cause of the unexplained aggression in a small polar town's residents was prehistoric bees, whose larvae were unearthed alongside mammoth bones.

Floods leading to increased humidity and infernal heat create the perfect environment for the rapid proliferation of insects, from locusts devouring already meagre crops to mosquitoes and flies spreading Dengue fever, a disease once confined to Asia, across all continents. In the coming decades, Europeans will need to learn much about tropical diseases that they previously might have encountered only while travelling through the exotic jungles of Southeast Asia.

How Can We Survive?

Source: Freepik

So, if extreme heat, humidity, floods, famine, and exotic epidemics do not completely wipe out humanity, what will this “brave new world” look like, and how can we survive in it?

If the climate situation does not improve, the second half of the 21st century is likely to see an exodus from megacities to suburbs. This migration could lead to the gentrification of depressed rural areas on one hand, while on the other, it may alter social dynamics. Wealthy city dwellers may relocate to villages, while the poor will be forced into the scorching concrete jungles of the megacities. It is quite possible that places like Manhattan could become one big dormitory for the poor. Architects of the past, when designing buildings and skyscrapers, never considered that deadly heat waves could pose a threat to life in these structures. However, there are solutions—reducing the number of highways and cars, maximising green spaces in cities (parks, squares), using heat-absorbing materials for building facades, laying lighter-coloured asphalt, and implementing “green roofs” (gardens and parks on rooftops)—while these measures won’t stop global warming, they can make life more bearable.

Building cities and residential complexes that account for new climate realities is also a feasible project, though its scale and cost are currently beyond the reach of most city administrations.

Humanity will survive, Goodell believes, but our lives will change significantly. However, if we add today’s political climate to the predictions of climatologists, our optimism may wane. While climate change gradually reshapes the world, today’s dictatorial regimes, such as those in Russia, Iran, and China, seek to change it rapidly, escalating the nuclear threat to a critical level.

Fear Has Big Eyes

If we return to the present day, it is worth noting that, so far, critical temperatures are not as high as they might seem to city dwellers alarmed by extreme heat. As Ukrainian meteorologist, TV presenter, and blogger Natalka Didenko writes:

"It probably existed before, but only with the advent of the social media era has it become much more visible—how many gaping holes there are in general education, basic culture, elementary (school) knowledge, and communication culture. This is at least. Today, I shared an explanation of how air temperature is professionally measured. Every season, I write about how the temperature of heated glass on a home thermometer or the effect of a hot windowsill on where the thermometer is placed is not air temperature. But people still keep sending me photos showing +50 degrees on their squirrel or bunny thermometer. They also write that experts are wasting money on their work—why not just step outside—what +35?!! We have +45! Ignorance is a sad thing, but aggressive ignorance is also dangerous. Wear hats, dark glasses, white muslin, and take care of yourself! Including from ignoramuses.”

Is the “Greenhouse Effect” and Global Warming the Only Cause?

In reality, many factors, beyond CO2 emissions, influence our climate—from the geological period we live in to cycles of solar activity.

The so-called solar cyclicity has several stages of activity. Scientists identify the 11-year Schwabe-Wolf cycle, the 22-year Hale cycle, the century-long Gleissberg cycle (ranging from 70 to 100 years), and the 200-year de Vries cycle. Each of these periods in the life of the sun is marked by an increase or decrease in the number of sunspots, fluctuations in the star’s magnetic field, and other parameters. Accordingly, the intensity of solar wind, ultraviolet light, and other factors affecting Earth changes, sometimes slightly (in short cycles) and sometimes quite noticeably (in long centennial periods).

Overall, the climate on Earth has always changed, as has the temperature (fluctuations have reached up to 10°C, which is significant), and dinosaurs could tell us a lot about what real heat is like if they had lived to see today.

Paleoclimatologists gather data about temperatures in the distant past by studying Antarctic ice (air bubbles trapped in permafrost can reveal a lot about the atmosphere’s composition and temperature hundreds of thousands of years ago), the beds of ancient seas (traces of glaciers and remains of ancient plants preserved in rock formations provide data on past climates), and even the rings of ancient trees (though they hold data for only a few centuries, it is still important for studying climate).

As for the geological epoch, we have only just left the Pleistocene and entered the Holocene—a new period that began about 12,000 years ago. This epoch marks the start of the current interglacial period. Interglacial periods are always accompanied by a climatic optimum—the highest peak of temperatures between cold glacial periods. On average, estimates of the likely duration of the Holocene range from 10,000 to 20,000 years, which means we only need to endure the heat for a little longer—and in a few thousand years, a new ice age will begin. 

And we can finally turn off the air conditioners.