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It's Heating Up!

Hi, I'm Mo Barrow with The Discovery Files, from NSF -- the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Quick! Turn on the AC! It's hot out there! But heat stress is no joke and climate change has been causing temperatures to heat up around the world.

Researchers at Clemson University, funded by NSF, project that the periods of extremely high heat are likely to double across the lower 48 states by the end of this century. As temperatures rise, so will the incidence of heat stress.

Heat stress is a consequence of both the temperature and humidity getting so high, the body is unable to rid itself of the excess heat. It can cause a number of heat-related conditions, to include cramps and worse -- stroke.

And the culprit? Climate change!

The research team noted that the effect of climate change on growing populations could dramatically impact human mortality in the decades ahead. They studied cases of heat stress from 1980 to 2019 calculating averages of the heat index for each summer during that 40-year period.

Then they compared this data to projected human-driven climate change models for those same targeted areas over future 40-year periods concluding that, due to population growth alone, the risk of heat stress is likely to increase more than two-fold in certain areas of the U.S.

Now, we really don't want to use the AC year-round, do we?

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