A pedestrian uses an umbrella to get some relief from the sun as she walks past a sign displaying the temperature on June 20, 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Ralph Freso | Getty Images
Heat records are falling around the world this summer, and scientists expect that climate change will make the problem worse in coming years.
Next year, about 50 U.S. counties, which are home to more than 8 million residents, are expected to experience heat index temperatures above 125 degrees Fahrenheit according to a new model released on Monday by First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research and technology group working to assess climate risk.
That puts those counties at the highest level of the National Weather Service’s heat index, which combines temperatures with humidity readings to estimate how hot it actually feels outside.
Thirty years later, those extreme temps will be experienced in more than one thousand counties, home to about 108 million Americans. First Street uses the 30-year model because that is the length of the most popular mortgage product in the U.S. Heat, flooding and fire risks are increasingly playing into home values, as climate change begins to factor into homebuying decisions.
The area seeing the biggest increase in heat is the South. Texas and Florida will bear the brunt of climate change, with the number of extreme heat days nearly doubling in the next thirty years. This is where much of the nation has migrated in recent years, as the work-from-anywhere culture emerged…
