Killer Heat Waves
Heat is a particularly insidious killer, especially in urban centers heavily populated by the poor and elderly. Heat kills many more people than other weather disasters such as tornadoes, even in the United States. The worst local U.S. heat wave killed more than 730 people in Chicago in July 1995. Unfortunately, it was far exceeded by the European heat wave of August 2003, which claimed at least 35,000 lives. France alone, which suffered through two weeks with readings as high as 104 F (40 C), lost nearly 15,000 people. As Janet Larsen of the Environmental Policy Institute wrote, this is 19 times the world death toll from SARS.

A study of long-term European temperatures, published in Science in March 2004, showed that 2003 was the hottest summer in 500 years, part of a trend that is not expected to abate. Jonathan Patz and colleagues wrote in Nature , in 2005, that this heat wave trend has already contributed to increased morbidity and mortality in many regions of the world. They warned of increasing effects in temperate latitudes and sprawling cities, where the majority of humans live now.