Hellhounds of summer: The hottest heatwave in human history just keeps getting worse

The global heatwave continues to sizzle as humanity experiences its hottest summer on record. Since June 10, when the heatwaves first began, more than 2,300 temperature records have been smashed around the globe, according to CNN. And there’s no end in sight for the ongoing scorch fest, with some predicting it could linger into August.

Welcome to the world altered by climate change: Heatwaves are so bad, they’ve been named after literal hellhounds, at least in the case with the ongoing European heatwave Cerberus, that received its moniker from the Italian Meteorological Society. Named in reference to the three-headed dog monster that inhabited hell in Dante’s Inferno, the title is somewhat controversial. However, it may be apt considering 61,000 Europeans died in last year’s heatwave, according to a recent study in Nature Medicine, and this one is just getting started.

Things are no less uncomfortable across the Atlantic. In Phoenix, Arizona, residents have suffered through at least 21 consecutive days with temperatures at or above 110ºF (43.3ºC). The previous record was 18 days. It’s not cooling off at night either, with the desert metropolis experiencing its “warmest low” in history: a shocking 97ºF (36.1ºC), even at night. At least 18 people in the area have died from heat so far this year, according to health officials. The majority of these individuals were either elderly or unhoused.

These alarming trends are consistent with predictions that climate change experts and social scientists have made for years that the Arizona metropolis would become uninhabitably hot due to climate change. Speaking to Salon in 2021, Dr. Juan Declet-Barreto of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained that this is due to the Heat Island Effect wherein “the temperatures inside the central parts of a city resemble an island, surrounded by a cooler ocean in the surrounding more rural areas.”