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US city smashes heat record for days above 38 degrees

In the past five years, the US city of Phoenix has averaged 40 days of 43 degrees or higher.

In the past five years, the US city of Phoenix has averaged 40 days of 43 degrees or higher. Photo: Getty

The US desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, endured a record 113 straight days with temperatures over 38 degrees this year, leading to hundreds of heat-related deaths and more land burned by wildfire across the state, officials say.

The city of 1.6 million residents, the largest in the Sonoran desert, had its hottest summer on record, breaking the previous 2023 record by nearly two degrees, according to the US National Weather Service.

The 113-day streak reached last week smashed Phoenix’s previous record of 76 days over 38 degrees set in 1993.

“It’s very rare that we see, especially… two record breaking summers like we just experienced,” National Weather Service Phoenix office meteorologist Matt Salerno said.

Heat has killed 256 people so far this year in Phoenix’s Maricopa County and is the suspected cause of 393 other deaths, according to official data. The county had a record 645 heat deaths last year.

“It is too early to project how totals in 2024 will compare with 2023,” said Nailea Leon, a spokesperson for Maricopa County’s public health department.

She said that year-to-date 2024 heat deaths and suspected deaths were below 2023 levels but the summer was not yet over.

About half of deaths are of unsheltered people, the county’s most vulnerable group.

Deaths peaked in July when Phoenix had regular highs of 47 degrees, a trend climate scientists attribute to global warming from fossil fuel pollution.

In the past five years, the city has averaged 40 days of 43 degrees or higher compared with about five days at the beginning of the last century, according to the Arizona State Climate Office.

The extreme heat has led to a statewide increase in hectares burned by wildfires in 2024 compared with last year, according to the office’s director Erinanne Saffell.

-AAP

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