Giving heat waves names and strength ratings, as is done with typhoons and hurricanes, could drive home the spiking danger from a threat that kills more people in the United States each year than storms and floods but rarely hits headlines, heat experts said on Tuesday.
"People do not understand this risk and we need to change that," said Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Washington-based Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, which works to cut climate change, migration and security risks.
With 2020 set to be one of the hottest years on record, in a long string of them, "extreme heat is or will be felt by everyone, everywhere, at some point. We have to build awareness to this invisible threat," she told an online event.
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