Three women from different parts of the globe are working together as a team to increase awareness of the growing dangers of extreme heat driven by climate change.
Jane Gilbert, the chief heat officer for Miami, joined her counterparts Eleni Myrivili, chief officer for Athens, Greece, and Eugenia Kargbo, chief officer of Freetown, Sierra Leone, at a video conference hosted by the Atlantic Council as part of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2021.
“One of the biggest challenges we have in Freetown is in terms of the mindset and behavioral change,” Kargbo told the conference. “When you talk about climate change, people relate it to flooding, people relate it to landslides and droughts and mudslides. They don’t think of extreme heat as a climate hazard.”
In an effort to increase awareness about the dangers of extreme heat in Athens, Myrivili explained the city’s plans to be the first in the world to categorize the heat waves that strike the city.
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A helicopter drops water over a fire in the village of Siderina about 34 miles south of Athens, Greece, on Aug. 16, 2021. Greek authorities deployed dozens of firefighters, as well as six water-dropping planes and four aircraft to combat the wildfire that broke out in the Keratea region southeast of Athens, near the national park of Sounion. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) |
“It also will be linking the type of heat with the type of morbidity and mortality we have seen in previous years and decades,” Myrivili said.
“Because it’s been the silent killer,” Gilbert said, “not everybody is fully aware of some of the challenges and dangers” posed by excessive heat.
In an interview last year with The New York Times, Myrivili discussed ways scientists were trying to make the threat of heat waves clearer to the public, with some considering the idea of giving heat waves names, similar to hurricanes — storms which are significantly less deadly than heat waves.
“Heat is an invisible and insidious killer,” Myrivili told the Times. “Heat is one of those climate hazards that you don’t really see. It’s hard for people to talk about it. You don’t see flying roofs and cars flooded. It is really important to get people to understand why it is dangerous.”
In Miami, the work of Gilbert and others has led to the establishment of an annual heat season, which will run from May to October.
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Franco Ferrari, of Italy, lounges on an inflatable beach chair as he enjoys a day at the beach on Aug. 4, 2017, in the South Pointe area of Miami Beach, Florida. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz) |
“We have urban heat islands where the temperatures can be 5 to 7 degrees Centigrade hotter than other areas of the city,” Gilbert said.
When asked about the fact that all three of the world’s first chief heat officers were women, the group said that climate change has significant impacts on women where they live.
“In Freetown, we have a lot of outdoor working population and most of those that are working outdoors are women, so when we think through the plans that we are putting together for the city, we have that in the back of our minds,” Kargbo said.
Heat is the most deadly type of weather in the United States, killing an average of 138 people per year. That is more than the average number of people killed each year by tornadoes and hurricanes combined.
When people spend too much time in the heat, whether working or playing, illnesses like heat exhaustion or heat stroke can crop up and turn fatal.
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