17.23°C averaged over Earth on July 6, the hottest day on record since temperature records exist.
It felt 54°C in temperature in Bangkok in April; The 40°C threshold has been regularly exceeded in the US, with a heat dome installed over Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma for two weeks.
61,000 heat-related deaths in Europe in 2022, according to the A recent study. Indeed, dozens of victims of the heat wave this summer in India and Mexico …
12 million air conditioners were sold in China in June, up 36% over the same period last year, according to The Straits Times.
We could go on endlessly, as heat waves multiply around the world and much faster than expected. The rapid rise in temperatures over the past few months has stunned scientists. They explain this by the association of several factors, including the climate crisis caused by human activity and the meteorological return of the El Niño phenomenon. Explain Watchman.
It’s time for worrying heatwaves lately Visau In a special issue devoted to the consequences of bouts of extreme heat, which will be more frequent in the future in large urban centers – the Portuguese magazine called on them to revolt if they did not want to turn into “Apocalyptic deserts.”
Cities are overcrowded, suffocating. However, in 2050 nearly 7 in 10 residents will live in urban areas (compared to 54% today), According to the World Bank. So it is urgent to adapt. That is the subject of this week’s report.
In Paris, where the city council voted on June 5 on an ambitious climate plan that plans to create 300 hectares of green space, the question has become vital. According to a study published in March by the British Scientific Journal scalpel, The French capital is already the deadliest city in the world in peak heat.
But if it’s necessarily (a bit) Paris in this dossier, we’ve chosen to look elsewhere this week.
First in Ahmedabad. Anti-heat paint, private insurance for workers, alert system with color code (intended for the most vulnerable population groups) … The anti-heat plan launched in this western Indian city in 2013 (the first in the sub-continent at that time) can To serve as a model for other cities in the country, and even further afield, the special envoys write for bloomberg. And this despite the limited resources. “Ahmedabad epitomizes the mix of adaptive measures cities around the world are taking to save lives in a hectic world” explains the US site.
In Sierra Leone, cooling roofs have been installed in some areas of the capital, Freetown, to cool interiors. An experiment told by the scientific journal new world from “It shows that you can significantly reduce the temperature inside a building by putting cheap reflective film on the roofs.”.
Greening cities, rethinking habitats by drawing inspiration from, for example, Arab architecture, suggests an English-language Emirati daily the National, Relying on satellites to map the heat signature of buildings… The measures taken in major cities to limit the effects of the heat wave contained in this file will certainly not be sufficient. But they open up avenues of thinking and show that consciousness is now universal.
Also read in this issue, Part 2 of our three summer series: A Journey in France, Loussos and Fighters des Flavors. In the southwest, a journalist from bloomberg, Once again, discover the charms of Bordeaux’s stalls. in Japan , Mainichi Shimbun He paints an amazing portrait of Poncho Hattori. Fixed in a deserted village, the mountaineer and adventurer practices a lifestyle in near complete detachment from capitalism and simply aspires to live freely and free from all restrictions. Finally, for the gourmet, in Savannah, USA, Mashama Bailey reinvents black American cuisine. the financial times He interviewed her last year. Tasty encounter.
Reward yourself.
