Heat Wave Resilience Challenge
Heat resilience challenges occur when there is a prolonged period of local excess heat as a sequence of unusually hot days and nights. Heat waves amplify many risks, such as health related or economic risks, including increased human mortality, drought and water quality, wildfire and smoke, power shortages and agricultural losses.
Minor Resilience Challenge
In the UK, a heat wave is defined as at least three days of temperature above a certain threshold, with short duration heat waves being fairly common before being replaced with more typical rainy weather.
Although these heat waves are relatively short in duration, they can cause a lot of issues for the population, particularly for more vulnerable members of society.
Examples
Average Resilience Challenge
Historically, heat waves in the UK have tended to be quite short in duration. However, they are now becoming both more frequent and longer-lasting when they do occur. This puts increasing heat stress on to the community, in that vulnerable people will suffer hard for longer and require specialised care. Also, the heat wave puts increasing stress on community infrastructure with frequent anecdotes about transport failure (melting roads, vehicle failing and so on).
Examples
Major Resilience Challenge
Major heat wave challenges occur when heat waves start to become the new normal, with traditional periods of cool weather and rainfall becoming less frequent. This is often viewed as climate adaptation where communities start to under take measures which until recently would have been considered unnecessary, such as the widespread uptake of residential air conditioning, municipalities developing heat plans and so on.
Examples