The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Here is a new feature for this blog, which I will add daily. This is the latest inciteful Green News Report from my friends Desi Doyen and Brad Friedman at Progressive Voices. Hit ‘continue reading,’ listen, then hit return to see my daily topics:
Main Topic: How Extreme Heat Affects the Brain
Dear Diary. So far during the summer of 2026 we have seen a spate of historic heatwaves both in the U.S. and in Europe. Heatwave Ember, that I dubbed for a dragon, has killed thousands of people across Europe, but what about those who were affected by extreme heat and survived? Unfortunately, extreme heat can direct affect organs including our brains.
Here is a short New York Times article about the brain and how it can be affected from body temperatures that rise to very high levels:
How Heat Affects the Brain – The New York Times
How Heat Affects the Brain
A growing body of research has shown that our brains work differently when temperatures spike.
To combat high temperatures, cities are opening cooling centers, repainting dark surfaces and investing in shade.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times
By Claire Brown
July 2, 2026
With more than 160 million people under extreme heat advisories as the Fourth of July weekend approaches, warnings about the dangers are clear. Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States. It can also make you flushed, irritable and worse at math.
A growing body of research has shown that our brains work differently when temperatures spike. Test scores fall and drivers honk more often. The good news is that we’re learning a lot more about how heat affects the brain. In fact, hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on the connection between heat and health have been published in recent years.
But there are longer-term effects of exposure to heat to consider, too. Recent research has found that hotter weather may make the brain more vulnerable to air pollution, increasing the risk for dementia and Parkinson’s disease.
This year, temperatures have already broken records in Europe and surpassed 120 degrees Fahrenheit in Australia. The temperatures in hundreds of cities across the United States have reached record highs over the past few days and are expected to remain elevated into the holiday weekend. That means people are increasingly being exposed to heat stress and its accompanying health concerns.
Today, we’re going to explain what we know about the effects extreme heat can have on the human brain, and what science says about preventing the worst outcomes.
A hot day and the brain
“Our brains work best under certain optimal temperatures and environments,” Burcin Ikiz, a neuroscientist and the director of the research group EcoNeuro, said at a recent panel at the National Academies.
“Anything that deviates from that, even a couple of degrees centigrade or a different environment, can cause stress on our brains,” she added.
The reaction can make people feel slower, angrier and less able to focus.
Several studies have found higher temperatures correlate with lower test scores. A 2025 analysis of three million tests taken by students from third to eighth grade found that math test scores worsened on hot days, with the effect being particularly pronounced at schools with higher poverty rates. The researchers speculated that the higher-poverty schools with the bigger drops may have had worse air-conditioning.
High temperatures are also associated with increased accident rates at workplaces and upticks in violent crime. Researchers studying “reactive aggression” have found that people playing video games in a hot room acted more spitefully than those in a cool room.
Air pollution and heat, a potent combination
Last year, the State of Global Air report, an annual study put together by the Health Effects Institute and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks air quality and research, included a section on brain health for the first time in its history.
The authors wrote that recent developments in research that “strengthened the evidence linking air pollution to neurodegeneration” necessitated the change. Air pollution killed nearly eight million people globally in 2023, the report found.
Exposure to particulate air pollution, known as PM 2.5, is associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in older adults, they wrote. It can also affect brain development in young people, increasing the risk of anxiety and depression. The report cited an estimate that one in four dementia deaths is attributable to air pollution.
Dr. Ikiz said that heat might make the blood-brain barrier more permeable, allowing more pollutants into the brain. The effect is most pronounced in children and older adults, she added.
Other recent research has found that improving air quality can have unexpected effects. When China began aggressive efforts to reduce air pollution in 2013, suicide rates decreased, according to a 2024 study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
What can be done?
At the individual level, the advice for extreme heat is straightforward: Try to stay cool. If air-conditioning isn’t available, close the curtains, drink cold fluids and avoid using the oven or stove. To remain protected against air pollution, stay indoors with the windows shut, keep an eye on the air quality index and avoid outdoor exercise when advised.
City officials are doing their part by opening cooling centers, repainting dark surfaces, investing in shade and converting air-raid shelters into heat relief zones.
A person cannot do much to control local air quality overnight. But the State of Global Air report also notes that it improved across much of the world between 2010 and 2023, and the richest countries tend to enjoy the cleanest air.
Many governments continue to improve air conditions by imposing limits on pollution from coal power plants and vehicle exhaust, though wildfire smoke remains a growing concern.
There can be trade-offs for better air quality. The particulate matter that causes health problems in humans actually cools the climate by blocking the sun. Removing it from the atmosphere has been shown to worsen extreme heat.
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the U.S. the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Tuesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)