Within 30 years, the US will have a ‘heat belt’

The tropics will have at least one day per year with extreme heat up to 51°C in 2053. Today it is already in 50 US counties. About 8 million people are affected by it. Within thirty years it would grow to over 1,000 counties in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and southern Wisconsin. The Midwest is also far from the ocean and is reportedly the most vulnerable. However, smaller areas on the East Coast and Southern California are also experiencing difficulties. About 107 million people will be affected by extreme temperatures.

The nonprofit First Street Foundation based its projections on a moderate scenario from United Nations (IPCC) climate experts, in which greenhouse gas emissions peak in the 2040s and then decline again. Heat causes more deaths in the U.S. than floods or hurricanes. Heat can cause problems, especially in areas that are not suited to strong heat, such as the northern part of the United States.

In addition to extreme temperatures, the study found that the U.S. as a whole will warm even more in the coming years. The nonprofit organization analyzed local temperatures expected to occur during the seven hottest days in 2023, and then looked at how many of those days there would be in 2053. It averaged more than eighteen or eleven hot days.