International | Extreme temperatures

The rise of the truly cruel summer

Deadly heat is increasingly the norm, not an exception to it

Muslim pilgrims take shade from the sun underneath an umbrella during the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia
Photograph: Ashraf Amra/APA Images /Zuma/Eyevine
|Los Angeles, Madrid and Mumbai

In Japan it starts with the pulsating song of cicadas; in Alaska, with salmon swimming upstream. However it begins, summer in the northern hemisphere—where more than 85% of the world’s population live—soon involves dangerous levels of heat. This year is no exception—indeed, it carries the trend further. In Saudi Arabia more than 1,300 pilgrims died during the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, as temperatures exceeded 50°C. India’s capital, Delhi, endured 40 days above 40°C between May and June. And in Mexico scores of howler monkeys have been falling dead from the trees with heatstroke.

Map: The Economist

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “When the sun beats down”

France’s centre cannot hold

From the June 29th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from International

Paris could change how cities host the Olympics for good

The games will test the success of new solutions to old bugbears

Could America fight its enemies without breaking the law?

The speed and intensity of prospective conflicts could test the laws of war


How China and Russia could hobble the internet

The undersea cables that connect the world are becoming military targets


Trump and other populists will haunt NATO’s 75th birthday party

Threats to Western alliances lie both within and without the club

Brainy Indians are piling into Western universities

Will rich countries welcome them the way they did Chinese students?

The new front in China’s cyber campaign against America

Big powers are preparing for wartime sabotage