"Adaptation: As Temperatures Rocket, Cities Fight Heat Waves"

"NEW YORK — Outside her apartment, at the height of a midsummer heat wave in Harlem, Caroline Gwynn shared her tips for staying cool without air conditioning.

Baggy clothes help, Gwynn said, as she and several neighbors lounged on the benches lining the wide, shaded sidewalk across the street from their apartment building. So does standing in front of the box fan in the window of her ground-floor apartment, where she had drawn the curtains to keep out the afternoon sun. The rent-controlled building on Edgecombe Avenue overlooks Jackie Robinson Park, a shady enclave with a city pool in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of West Harlem. ...

Heat waves may tire all of us out — and not in just New York City. In the coming decades, heat waves will be longer, more frequent and more intense in many parts of the country, according to the 2014 National Climate Assessment. This summer alone, extreme heat has killed grape pickers in California fields and hikers in Arizona. At least four people died of heat-related illnesses in El Paso, Texas, where the city saw 16 days in a row of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, the third-longest stretch ever. Phoenix saw its hottest combined June and July on record, with temperatures averaging 96 degrees daily. And higher-than-average temperatures and drought have scorched corn and peanut crops in Tennessee and Georgia."

Erika Bolstad reports for ClimateWire August 23, 2016.