June 20, 2024: Welcome to the new normal summer, CRISPR for detecting disease, and the science of Doctor Who. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Today is the summer solstice, when Earth's northern axis is at its most tilted toward the sun. The sun spends the longest time above the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere today (the opposite is happening in the Southern Hemisphere), and the additional hours of heating this time of year yields the warmth of summer. | | | Earth's spin axis is tilted by about 23 degrees compared with the plane of its orbit. Tfr000/Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) | But not all summers are the same. The warming of Earth's climate is causing more frequent summer heat waves. The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service's forecast for 2024 shows a greater than 50 percent chance of above-normal temperatures across nearly all of the Northern Hemisphere. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also predicts above-normal temperatures for most of the U.S., especially in Southwest and Northeast states. So far, these predictions have come true, with three major heat waves already in the books--one in Mexico, another in the western U.S., and one occurring right now, with a "heat dome" settled over the Northeast. Mild summers are decidedly a thing of the past. | Amanda Montañez; Source: Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (data) | The time range for what we think of as "summer weather" is changing as the world heats up. A 2021 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that summers had grown from 78 to 95 days as the other three seasons shrank, based on when the highest 25 percent of temperatures occurred in a given location. When averaged across 50 large U.S. cities, the heat wave season has grown from about 24 days in the 1960s to 73 days today--49 days longer than it used to be. | Amanda Montañez; Source: Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (heat wave season data) | Why this matters: Heat waves pose an increasingly severe public health threat. Summer of 2023 was the hottest in 2,000 years, and some 2,300 people in the U.S. died from excessive heat during that season, the highest number in 45 years of recorded data, according to a recent analysis. Some experts think total heat-related deaths are far higher. Extreme heat is more deadly than all other weather-related disasters combined. | During a week in July of 1995, a heat wave hit Chicago. Temperatures hovered above 100 degrees and the extreme weather caused 700 excess deaths between July 11 and July 27. Credit: Jen Christiansen; Sources: EPA's Climate Change Indicators in the United States (Chicago heat-wave reference, with data from CDC and NOAA) | | | What can be done: Labor unions, green groups and public health advocates filed a petition this week with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to add "extreme heat" and "wildfire smoke" to the 16 types of events that can trigger the release of disaster aid to states and households. Only five states have laws protecting workers from extreme heat, and there is no federal standard.
What the experts say: "People aren't always prepared for today's extreme heat because we think of summer weather in terms of a gentler climate that no longer exists," writes Andrea Thompson, sustainability editor for Scientific American. Prior experiences drastically affect how people perceive risk, says Micki Olson, who researches risk communication at the University at Albany. "They remember a heat wave—they don't remember a temperature." It's time we all got used to a new, sweltering normal. | | | A Solution for Loneliness The U.S is in the middle of an epidemic of loneliness, according to Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy. Experts caution that this loneliness may be as harmful to health as smoking. In a new video with Retro Report, we explore one possible solution: cohousing communities. Cohousing typically involves communities of privately owned single-family houses built around shared spaces. | | | • Diagnostic tests using the gene-editing tool CRISPR could potentially detect Sars-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID), as well as deadly bacteria and cancer mutations. | 3 min read | | | • Satellites pose a new threat to the ozone layer. | 11 min listen | | | The Doctor on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who has two hearts. Ncuti Gatwa plays the Doctor in the latest season of the show. TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock Photo | | | • "Excited delirium syndrome" is a completely fabricated term used to explain the deaths of people that occur while they are being physically detained by the police. It is not recognized by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization, and California recently banned its use as a cause of death. Other states are following suit. "Though the term is out of favor and is beginning to be removed from documentation and police training manuals, the medical cover-up for police violence persists," writes Aisha M. Beliso-de Jesús, professor and chair of the Effron Center for the Study of America at Princeton University. | 5 min read | | | A tip for cooling down fast: Put a cold pack or cool surface against your feet and hands–special blood vessels there transfer heat away from the core of the body to the surrounding environment. As our sustainability editor Andrea Thompson so aptly put it during last summer's extreme heat: This hot summer will be one of the coolest for the rest of our lives." We've got to find new ways--at home, out in the world, and at the policy level--of keeping cool. | Reach out anytime with your own tips for beating the heat and other feedback: newsletters@sciam.com. I read all your notes and respond to many. See you tomorrow. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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