Heat waves are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity, and lasting longer, due to climate change. They are one of the least visible, yet most fatal forms of extreme weather: in 2023, the Scientific Americanreported that heat waves kill more people in a typical year than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined in the United States.
Part of their stealth danger is the lack of property damage they tend to cause, and who the people are that are dying. An editorial from the New York Times this September pointed out that the most disadvantaged members of society – elderly, isolated, poor – are those most affected by extreme heat. The National Library of Medicine also identifies homeless people as being at significantly higher risk for heat-related morbidity.
Should we name heat waves?
The opinion piece in the Times, written by sociologist Eric Klinenberg, advocates for giving heat waves names, similar to hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, to get people to take them more seriously:
“Climate change requires cultural change, not just technological fixes. Naming the single deadliest meteorological threat our species faces is one of the easiest changes we can make. Over time, it would not only elevate the cultural importance of major heat events. It would also signal that scientists and officials want all of us to rethink our relationship to the environment, and to one another.”
But does naming extreme weather actually influence what precautions people take? Professor Barbara Summers and associate professor Andrea Taylor at the University of Leeds have conducted research that found naming heat waves only accounts for a small difference in how concerned people are.
In their meeting abstract, “How concerning is Lucifer? Insights from an experimental study of public responses to heat event naming in England and Italy”, Summers and Taylor (together with PhD candidate Pietro Bellomo and professor Suraje Dessai), looked at how naming heat waves with threatening and unthreatening names affected concern and behavioural intentions in Italy and the United Kingdom.
“Naming the heatwave accounted for less than 1% of the variance in levels of concern in both cases”, Summers and Taylor wrote in a joint email about their findings.
Concern about climate change
“Other characteristics – concern about climate change, how typical and pleasant the summer weather considered in the survey had been and concern about the consequences of heat impacts for the country – explained considerably more variation in response: 26% for English respondents, and 35% for Italian respondents.
Although the effect of the name used was very small, it did differ between the two countries, with an unexpected type of name in Italy generating a lower response (where this already a naming convention). This means that we might see a different pattern again in the US where naming history is different.”
Hurricanes and tropical storms impacting North America have been named by the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an official American government agency) since 1953, with the goal of avoiding confusion and improving communication, as multiple tropical storms can occur at a time in different locations. “This is a very different motive to that in the New York Times piece,”, Summers and Taylor write.
Awareness of heat threat
“In terms of the USA, it is not clear what we might predict. It may be that our results reflect existing awareness of heat threat in Europe, which may not be the case to the same extent in all areas in the US. America is also more regionally varied than the two countries we studied, so naming might have a different effect in different areas depending on historic experience as well as the trend.
Deaths in the US overall classified as heat related between 1979-2022 were below 5 deaths per million annually overall (according to the US Environment Protection Agency) and extrapolating figures from the US Department of Health and Human Services, using total deaths in 2022 and 2023) deaths were about 34% higher in 2023 than 2022, which would put them between 7 and 7.5 deaths per million.
This overall level is considerably below levels in both Italy and the UK, although this may not be true for all regions. In Italy deaths were 295 per million in 2022 (Barcelona Institute for Global Health). In England it was just under 80 per million (according to Sky News, based on Office for National Statistics data). The names used also need consideration, so that names are not used as an inappropriate indicator of severity.”
“Naming procedures for heat events may need to be made clear to the public, so that a heat warning that does not give rise to any issues in a particular area will not undermine confidence in warnings,” according to Summers and Taylor.
The Weather Channel
One example of potentially undermining confidence also happened in America: The Weather Channel, a paid television channel, has been naming winter storms since the 2010s, but the American National Weather Service refrains from using names for winter weather systems.
Research from 2017 – What’s in a #Name? An Experimental Study Examining Perceived Credibility and Impact of Winter Storm Names – analysed the impact of The Weather Channel naming storms and public response to them. The researchers found that “little difference exists between individual perceptions dependent on whether a name is used or the type of name used” and that “individuals do not differ in levels of perceived severity or susceptibility toward a fictional winter storm dependent on the type of name used.”
Communicating accurately and providing support
Individual adaptation should – and must – happen alongside systemic mitigation and moving toward net zero. As of now, research from environmental psychology suggests that naming heat waves is not a silver bullet for mitigating heat wave-related deaths. But better public communication about the effects of heat, providing facilities and support for people to keep cool, and sharing accurate information about ways to safely adapt could give people more confidence in such warning, and mean fewer lives lost.
