When an unprecedented heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest last July, emergency rooms sought any way possible to lower the core body temperatures of patients coming in droves with heat-related ailments. Many emergency departments in the region began putting people in body bags filled with ice to help safely adjust their temperatures. But despite their lifesaving efforts, around 1,000 excess deaths occurred from the brutal heat. 

Kristie Ebi, Professor of Global Health and of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at UW, is quoted.

The Supreme Court has voted to curb the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions. This comes amid a period of increasingly extreme weather around the world.

Kristie Ebi, Professor of Global Health and of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, is interviewed.

Heat waves have become much more common in major U.S. cities over the last few decades, from an average of two per year in the 1960s to six per year in the 2010s. Global temperatures are also rising steadily, at a pace of around 0.17 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1901. That might sound small, but in climate science, it’s a lot. 2016 was the warmest year on record, and 2020 was the second warmest.

Epidemiologists have focused a huge amount of attention on hunting down the moment those viruses made the interspecies leap. Which bats? When? But there’s another, broader question to be asked: Why do certain mammals bump into each other at all? And are there forces that make it more likely that a diseased bat ends up in a place where it can infect people? Kristie Ebi, professor of global health, is quoted.