Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

Our research has demonstrated that extreme weather events, including heat waves, provide critical “teachable moments” when the public, media, and policymakers focus their otherwise scattered attention on high-risk events that often have a direct link to climate change. Communicating how climate change is making these extreme weather events worse can increase public understanding of climate risks across partisan lines, which in turn raises issue salience and priority, and public demand for climate action. 

As millions of Americans have already or will be experiencing heat waves intensified by climate change this summer, we are sharing a round-up of our most relevant resources and insights on extreme heat to support your communication efforts. 

As of May 2025, we find that 48% of Americans are at least “moderately worried” that their local area might be harmed by extreme heat. That worry is rising, as are worries about related health risks: From October 2014 to December 2024, the percentage of Americans who think that heat stroke caused by extreme heat waves will become more common in their community over the next 10 years as a result of global warming has tripled (to 45%, an increase of 31 percentage points). 

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) think global warming is affecting extreme heat in the U.S. at least “some”. Despite high confidence among climate scientists that global warming is contributing to more frequent and severe heat waves, 24% of Americans either think global warming is not affecting extreme heat (12%) or say they don’t know (12%).

Other Top Insights

• Scientists can measure the impact of climate change on extreme heat more easily than they can attribute other types of extreme weather, and so heat waves present an effective communication opportunity. This recorded webinar explores the field of attribution science and how to effectively communicate the impact of human-caused climate change on extreme weather events, especially extreme heat. 
  • Our partners at the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication also found that information about extreme heat from climate change is more familiar, intuitive, and easier for people to understand compared to other health harms from climate change.
• Messages linking a heat wave to climate change tend to increase Americans’ understanding that climate change makes heat waves more likely. Explore more results in the peer-reviewed paper. 
• Americans are becoming more worried about extreme heat. Between March 2018 and April 2023, Americans grew more worried about extreme heat (an increase of 9 percentage points), more so than other climate impacts, such as wildfires (+5 points), hurricanes (-1 point), and flooding (-3 points). 
• Educational outreach on extreme heat in the Midwest and Southwest may be especially beneficial. While extreme heat exposure is correlated with worry about global warming overall in the U.S., many midwestern and southern counties with relatively high exposure to extreme heat have lower-than-average levels of worry about global warming.
• Americans living in cooler regions tend to perceive less risk of being harmed from heat waves than people living in warmer areas, yet people in cooler regions are often at greater risk due to limited access to indoor cooling. Explore our peer-reviewed results and interactive risk perception maps. 
• In a 2023 survey of 99,453 Facebook users primarily located in the Global South, respondents nearly everywhere were more likely to say that they had recently experienced long periods of unusually hot weather than any other hazard. Explore the report for other insights and results by region. 

YPCCC Partnership Resources

• The YPCCC Partnerships Program offers consultation and other resources to help climate communicators apply these insights to drive impact. To learn more about our partnerships, visit our partnerships hub.

Stories from Yale Climate Connections

• How to spot the symptoms of heat stroke and heat exhaustion
• Common medications may increase the danger of heat waves
• The Yale Climate Connections guide to extreme heat

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