Heat Waves and 'Thirstwaves'

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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What better week is there to discuss heat? Actually, I hope this is the best week of the Summer of ’25 to do so . . . but I suspect there will be others.

Every time I’m with my three-year-old granddaughter, I am reminded that we have an entire generation being born during a time when climate change has accelerated significantly and who will still be under 10 years old in 2030. That is the year many scientists see as the tipping point between a manageable and unmanageable world climate.

Except for those of us who missed science class that day, we know that the two essentials to support life on Earth are air and water. Except for climate-change deniers or ignorers and those in the pocket of the major fossil-fuel interests, we are recognizing that the air is getting too hot and water is becoming too scarce. As I write this, much of the eastern half of the U.S. is broiling under a “heat dome” which, no doubt, will prove deadly for some people.

Extreme heat events here and elsewhere in the world might be bearable if they were anomalies and the heat range will return to normal next year. But it is more likely there is a Santa Claus – perhaps revealed to us by a melting North Pole. No, the only good news here is today’s trials are not as bad as next year’s will be and the year after that. For more and more swaths of the planet, escalating heat and drought is the new normal. As Dhruv Khullar stated in his article “Fahrenheit 121” in The New Yorker, “For a billion people, the Great Heat Wave is here.” Khuller included that one day two summers ago in Delhi, the temperature hit 121 and overheated birds fell from the sky. Might that melting city exceed that this summer?

There is plenty of evidence that North America is not immune to the worsening heat and drought situations in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The New York Times reported, “Mexico, or large parts of it, is running out of water. An extreme drought has seen taps run dry across the country, with nearly two-thirds of all municipalities facing a water shortage that is forcing people in some places to line up for hours for government water deliveries.” Just one example: The government of the state of Nuevo Leon, which borders Texas and whose capital is Monterrey, sends tank trucks every day to distribute water to people in 400 neighborhoods, some of whom have not had running water for months. Residents line up hours in advance waiting for the trucks to arrive – if they arrive at all, because some are hijacked with water joining drugs as valued merchandise for some cartels. This is certainly not a sustainable routine.

We do not have to look anywhere else in the world to see the U.S. is already in a water crisis. Every minute of every day 40 million Americans rely on the Colorado River for drinking water, for powering hydroelectric plants, and everything else for which the Southwest needs water. The lack of foresight about use and the consequences of climate change has resulted in a river soon to be unable to provide an adequate amount of water. Another example is Lake Mead in Nevada, the largest reservoir in the country, which is now three-quarters empty and at its lowest level since 1937, when it was first filled. (Hey, maybe we’ll finally find the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.) When the lake empties, so will Las Vegas. Paradoxically, home-building and other development go virtually unchecked in the Southwest.

Scientists and some officials are grappling with “atmospheric thirst.” According to a study in the journal Nature published earlier this month, a drying planet has meant that during the last four decades droughts have become more frequent, more intense, and cover larger areas. And there is another new term: “thirstwaves” – when evaporative demand is exceptionally high for at least three days, putting crops at risk.

According to a New York Times article on the Nature study, “Some farmers in the West are giving up on irrigation, while more farmers in the Upper Midwest are beginning to invest in expensive irrigation systems” – which will use more what, further depleting the supply. This too is unsustainable.

An unwelcome prospect is limitations on drinking water as well as on watering lawns and other uses previously taken for granted. But agriculture uses 75 percent of the fresh water in the Southwest, meaning, as John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority told The Nevada Independent, “You could evacuate Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles and still not have counted enough water” needed to support the present level of farming. The result: Forget Asia and Africa, America will have its own food crisis.

Impose conservation measures? Even if the present administration was willing to do so – which would involve acknowledging that climate change is not a hoax – think of the millions of people who during the Covid-19 pandemic scoffed at or refused to wear masks and be vaccinated against a disease that killed over a million Americans. You think they are going to accept being told they will have to flush their toilets less often?

An important aspect about heat and drought to consider, nationally and locally, is we must accept that heat waves will become hotter and of longer duration. One guarantee that the situation will only get worse was a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration telling us that in 2023 the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere broke a record. There is now more carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere than at any time in four million years. Emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from power plants, vehicles, and other sources have exceeded 35 billion tons.

Another aspect is the combination of heat, drought, and war will create more intense food shortages. There are already 800 million people on the planet in a state of chronic hunger. Together, Ukraine and Russia were producing enough food to feed 400 million people and they accounted for 12 percent of all globally traded calories, according to David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth. Now those countries continue to have each other in a chokehold and the effects are being felt in other, hungry countries.

A third aspect is the direct impact on humans. As the New York Times reported bluntly, “With severe heat waves now affecting wide areas of the globe with frightening regularity, scientists are drilling down into the ways life in a hotter world will sicken and kill us.” The article continues: “And if global warming is not slowed, the hottest heat wave many people have ever experienced will simply be their new summertime norm. It’s not going to be something you can escape.”

One particular concern is that under steam-bath conditions our bodies absorb heat from the environment faster than we can sweat to cool ourselves down. One result is cardiovascular collapse, another is kidney failure. There can even be damage to our DNA. A consequence of heatstroke and similar heat-related conditions is more hospitalizations – right at a time when institutions like hospitals are placing greater stress on increasingly taxed power grids.

One of the most active areas of research is the impact of heat on children who, if we get that far, will become the next generation of decision-making and income-producing adults. There is serious concern among scientists because high temperatures and extreme heat can cause children to become sick very quickly in several ways -- dehydration, heat exhaustion, heat cramps, and then heatstroke, which is a medical emergency. High heat can also contribute to irritability both for children and their caregivers. Children have a smaller body mass to surface area ratio than adults, making them more vulnerable to heat-related morbidity and mortality. Children are more likely to become dehydrated than adults because they can lose more fluid quickly.

Our focus on climate change, especially the impacts on air and water, cannot wane this fall as the heat waves do. I couldn’t help but clip out a brilliant New Yorker cartoon: Four children hover around a birthday cake, and as one is about to make a wish and blow out the candles, another says, “Don’t overthink it – any wish that’s not about reversing climate change is pretty pointless anyhow.”

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including Throne of Grace (with Bob Drury) and Bandit Heaven, both published by St. Martin’s Press. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.