AKIPRESS.COM - Asia, Europe and the United States baked under extreme heat on Monday as global temperatures soared toward alarming highs and U.S. leaders sought to reignite climate diplomacy with China, Reuters reported.
The United States was scorched by record-setting heat in the West and South, lashed with flood-triggering rain in the Northeast, and choked by wildfire smoke in the Midwest.
A heat dome parked over the western United States pushed the temperature in California's Death Valley desert to 53 Celsius on Sunday, among the highest temperatures recorded on Earth in the past 90 years.
Phoenix hit 45.5 C on Monday, matching a historic record of 18 straight days over 43.3 C with the forecast showing the record likely to extend for at least another week.
The U.S. heatwave coincided with extreme temperatures elsewhere throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
A remote town in China's arid northwest, Sanbao, registered a national record of 52.2 C. Wildfires in Europe raged ahead of a second heat wave in two weeks that was set to send temperatures as high as 48 C, while authorities in Italy and France issued heat-related health warnings.
Even in Phoenix, accustomed to hot weather, the prolonged bout of extreme heat is testing people and worrying officials. The international charitable organization Salvation Army has opened 11 cooling centers and sent out a mobile unit to deliver relief to homeless people who have difficulty reaching the sites.
"Extreme heat is Arizona's natural disaster. So for the Salvation Army, this is a disaster response," said Scott Johnson, a spokesperson for the organization in the U.S. Southwest.
The heat killed 425 people in the Phoenix-area's Maricopa County last year, so the Salvation Army mobile unit distributes urgently needed cold water, hats, sunscreen and hygiene kits to those in need.
Scientists have long warned that climate change, caused by CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, will make heatwaves more frequent, severe and deadly. They say governments need to take drastic actions to reduce omissions to prevent climate catastrophe.
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service says 2022 and 2021 were the continent's hottest summers on record.
The extreme global temperatures underscored the urgency in talks that resumed between China and the United States on climate change, especially as scientists say the target of keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels is moving beyond reach.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Beijing, urging joint action to cut methane emissions and coal-fired power.
An unrelenting heatwave continued in Europe as well.
Italy's health ministry on Monday issued red weather alerts - signaling a possible health threat for anyone exposed to the heat - for 20 of the country's 27 main cities on Tuesday, with the number expected to rise to 23 on Wednesday.
France's public health agency said the current stretch of hot weather would probably hospitalize or kill "many" people, as heat waves have done almost every summer since 2015. The World Meteorological Organization said the extreme heat and rainfall was expected to extend into August.
As many as 61,000 people may have died in Europe during heatwaves last summer, with a repetition feared this season.
"My worry is really health - the health of vulnerable people who live just below the rooftops of houses which are not prepared for such high temperatures. That could create a lot of deaths," said Robert Vautard, a climate scientist and director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute.