People don’t take the threat of heat seriously enough, writes Marshall Shepherd, UGA’s Athletic Association Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Geography, in a column for Forbes.
“Heat can’t be filmed ripping through a subdivision of houses or crashing onto densely populated coastlines,” Shepherd wrote. “Yet, more than 30,000 people died in the 2003 European Heat Wave. In public forums, I find that most people don’t remember it. However, they likely remember Hurricane Katrina, which killed an order of magnitude less people. In 2015, deadly heat waves killed thousands in India and Pakistan.”
