Climate Change Will Drive Up Manhattan's Heat-Related Death Toll

Despite the modern advances of central air and cooling centers, record-hot weather still regularly kills people all over the world. A 2010 heat wave in Russia was blamed for killing about 55,000 people. An earlier one, in 2003, claimed 70,000 across Europe. And an infamously scorching stretch of the summer of 1995 in Chicago killed about 750.

Climate change brings with it the threat that such natural disasters could happen more often, with higher death tolls, as late spring and early fall start to feel more like summer, and as summer itself gets worse. Cities are particularly vulnerable, given the urban heat island effect (we also know that certain neighborhoods within most cities are at particularly grave risk). Temperatures around New York City, for example, increased by about 2 degrees Celsius between 1901 and 2000 – a rate that was higher than the national average.