heat waves

As record temperatures bake portions of the United States this summer, a Chicago heat wave in 1995 offers a grim preview of the toll from climate change.

A history of record-breaking highs but also of sweaty, sticky, corporeal experiences.

Before AC, office workers relied on building design to adapt to high temperatures. The promise of boosted productivity created a different kind of workplace.

As summers get hotter, public pools help people stay cool. Why are they so neglected?

People have come up with a range of ingenious, harebrained, and sometimes grim but often remarkable ways to stay cool during a summer scorcher.

A study of more than 100 cities shows neighborhoods subjected to discriminatory housing policies nearly a century ago are hotter today than other areas.

The city in summer floated in a daze that moved otherwise sensible people to repeat endlessly the brainless greeting “Hot enough for ya?”

Athletes drank poison, dodged traffic, stole peaches and even hitchhiked during the 24.85-mile race in St. Louis.

Why headlines blaming extreme weather on climate change don’t hold up, the peril of catastrophism, and the case that we’re actually safer than ever before.

Hurricane Katrina exposed deep inequities in federal disaster response. "We never felt so cut off in all our lives."

How decades-old decisions to build two California prisons in a dry lakebed and a chaotic climate left 8,000 incarcerated people at risk.

How the dream of air conditioning turned into the dark future of climate change.

Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

Fewer fires are burning worldwide than at any time since antiquity. But in banishing fire from sight, we have made its dangers stranger and less predictable.

If we accept that we live in a desert nation, we can glean insights about how to live with aridity.

While we're missing three weeks of sporting endeavors due to the Tokyo Olympics, we can revisit one of the most bizarre races in modern Olympic history.

Smog first came to Los Angeles suddenly, like a stranded hitchhiker. It was July 8th, 1943, and we were at war.