Climate Change discussion should focus more on extreme heat: Christian Braneon

In an interview with Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman, Christian Braneon NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Columbia University Climate School discusses why extreme heat should be at the forefront of climate change discussion.

Video transcript

RICK NEWMAN: Christian Braneon, you've been involved in some research into the costs, the real world costs in terms of health outcomes, deaths, and other things like that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

CHRISTIAN BRANEON: Well, you know, a lot of people don't realize that the deadliest weather hazard in the United States is actually extreme heat. You know, folks are dying because of the increased frequency of heat waves. Heat waves are becoming more intense. Heat waves are lasting longer. Heat waves are causing folks to be hospitalized and causing folks to have a lower quality of life.

And right now, even though only about 350 cities are experiencing average summertime highs around the world for about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, we expect by 2050 that over 900 cities globally will experience these ridiculous extremely high temperatures. The urban population, in particular, exposed to extreme heat will reach 1 and 1/2 billion, we project by mid-century.

So I think if we focus more on the folks that are actually the victims from climate change, and we have a lot of confidence from global climate models in terms of what's going to happen in terms of heat and heat waves, we can kind of get folks' attention because we all kind of have a connection to extreme heat, we all have a connection to heat waves. These are the things we've all experienced. And we have to take note that the urban poor, folks living in poverty in cities, will be disproportionately affected. Now we expect over 215 million people to be suffering from extreme heat and in poverty in cities.