Texans are yet again experiencing record-breaking heat this summer. Unfortunately, future temperatures in the Lone Star State are only expected to rise in the years and decades to come. Researchers are now warning about a future "extreme heat belt" likely forming during the next 30 years that would stretch from Texas to Wisconsin. Those communities will be regularly exposed to months of heat index temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as less frequent days eclipsing 125 degree Fahrenheit.
The report released Monday by nonprofit research group First Street Foundation, which cites government data, found that the area concentrated in the middle of the country could see a major increase in the intensity and frequency of the hottest days of the year.
Temperatures exceeding the National Weather Service's "extreme danger" threshold (any instance when the heat index is above 125 degrees Fahrenheit) are expected to impact about eight million people in the U.S. this year. However, that number is expected to increase to 107 million impacted people by 2053, according to the study.
"Increasing temperatures are broadly discussed as averages, but the focus should be on the extension of the extreme tail events expected in a given year," said Matthew Eby, founder and CEO of First Street Foundation, in a news release. "We need to be prepared for the inevitable, that a quarter of the country will soon fall inside the Extreme Heat Belt with temperatures exceeding 125 degrees Fahrenheit and the results will be dire."
A graphic from the First Street Foundation study shows "extreme danger days" projected for 2023 and 2053.
First Street FoundationResearchers also found that across the country, on average, the number of days where temperatures approach the hottest day of the year will rise from seven to 18 days per year by 2053. This effectively means that the number of days that feel like the hottest day of the year will more than double in the next 30 years. The most severe shift in extreme temperatures will occur in Florida's Miami-Dade County, where the hottest seven days of the year, currently hovering around 103 degrees Fahrenheit, will occur on 34 days at that same temperature by 2053, per the study.
Texas' Aransas County will experience the largest increase in how many of its days reach the hottest day of the year apex temperature, which is currently 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit: That number is expected to grow from seven days this year to 28 consecutive days over the next three decades. Galveston County will see the seventh-highest shift, with the seven hottest days of 2023 occurring across 26 days in 2053.
The number of counties expected to reach a heat index above 125 degrees at least once a year across the country will grow from 50 in 2023 to 1,023 in 2053, impacting more than 107 million Americans, according to the study. The probability of local heat waves, defined as temperatures well above normal for three consecutive days, will also rise significantly across the country, with the highest probabilities happening along the West Coast and across the Southeast of the country, according to the study.
"Interestingly, exposure to Consecutive Local Hot Days is most likely to occur in West Coast states," the study explains, "while states in the Midwest, Southeast, and East Coast are most at risk of exposure to extremely dangerous temperatures, meaning virtually the entire country is subject to increasing perils associated with heat exposure."
First Street researchers also used their peer-reviewed heat model to create an online tool called Risk Factor for people to assess how their homes could be affected based on future predictions for the next 30 years.
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