Should Heat Waves Be Named?

In summary, I’ll agree with the idea in concept. We need ways to get more attention to the topic and the events as they are happening. Climate change is going to create more instances where we need to rethink how we communicate about hazards.

See this New York Times story: “Europe’s latest heat wave has an unofficial name: Caronte.”

I’ve provided one excerpt below about naming heat waves from the article:

“European news outlets are referring to the latest heat wave in Southern Europe as ‘Caronte,’ after the ferryman in Dante Alighieri’s poem ‘Inferno.’

“That name was chosen not by the World meteorological Organization or another
official agency, but by Antonio Sanò, who founded the Italian weather website Il Meteo.

“Some climate experts are urging government agencies to start naming heat waves, as they do for hurricanes and tropical storms.

“Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, which focuses on climate adaptation, said that naming and categorizing heat waves based on their severity would raise awareness about the dangers of extreme heat.

“‘Heat, because it is silent and invisible, does not have the telegenic nature of these other big climate hazards like floods, hurricanes and fires,’ Ms. McLeod said. ‘People don’t have the awareness that’s necessary, and that’s why it’s killing more people than any other climate hazard. It needs P.R. and branding,’ she said.

“Mr. Sanò, the founder of Il Meteo, said he started naming heat waves in 2012 as a way to explain the heat wave to the public in a simple and memorable way. A devoted reader of classical literature, Mr. Sanò named last week’s heat wave in Southern Europe ‘Cerberus,’ after the multiheaded dog that guards the underworld in Greek mythology.

“So far, however, government agencies have no immediate plans to assign names to heat waves.”