Extreme heat, reduced rivers, and higher education

For years I’ve been researching and writing about the impact of climate change on higher education. This summer has brought global warming to the forefront; will academia take the crisis more seriously as a result?

To recap from the past month: higher temperatures, too much water, and too little water, all exacerbated by the climate crisis have wracked the world. Let’s start with China, where an unusually high heat wave is hitting province after province:

On 18 August, the temperature in Chongqing in Sichuan province reached 45°C (113°F), the highest ever recorded in China outside the desert-dominated region of Xinjiang. On 20 August, the temperature in the city didn’t fall below 34.9°C (94.8°F), the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in China in August. The maximum temperature was 43.7°C (110.7°F).

It is the longest and hottest heatwave in China since national records began in 1961.

Which is bad for reasons we’ll discuss, but I wanted to add this detail:

According to weather historian Maximiliano Herrera, who monitors extreme temperatures around the world, it is the most severe heatwave recorded anywhere.

“This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time,” he says. “There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China.”