India houses half of all people vulnerable to life-threatening heat

The researchers found that more than half the people on Earth who face life-threatening heat stress caused by climate change live in India

When bestselling science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson opened his latest novel, The Ministry for the Future, he set the scene in India, where a deadly heat dome wipes out almost the entire population of a provincial city, sewing the seed for a radical political movement to combat climate change. 

Two years after the book was released, a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers troubling data that could turn Stanley’s narrative into reality. The researchers found that more than half the people on Earth who face life-threatening heat stress caused by climate