600 Million People Can’t Stay Cool. The ‘Hot City’ Problem Is Growing

New research finds urban heat is being intensified by traffic and other human-generated waste heat that many climate models still miss.

A new traffic-heat module in the Community Earth System Model suggests vehicle emissions can raise average annual temperatures in cities like Toulouse and Manchester.

The warming is already worsening health risks, with rising heatstroke and record temperatures reported in places including London, southern India and Japan.

As extreme heat events become more common, unmodeled city heat sources could make urban climate projections less accurate and dangers more severe.