This article was written by Reuters and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 16, 2023.

Heat-related illnesses and deaths are rising as the world warms, an international team of health experts said on Tuesday, forecasting a 370-per-cent surge in yearly heat deaths by midcentury if the world warms by two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

Already, at roughly 1.1 degrees of warming, people experienced about 86 days of health-threatening high temperatures on average in 2022, the report from the Lancet medical journal found.

The findings, assembled by more than 100 experts from 52 different research institutions and United Nations agencies, deepen concerns over the health effects posed by heat.

“We are paying in lives,” report executive director Marina Romanello said of the world’s inaction on climate change.

The United Nations’ annual climate change conference, COP28, in Dubai will focus in part on health effects for the first time.

Some 46 million health professionals have called on the COP28 presidency to push for a phase-out of fossil fuels.