CLIMATE change is making giant heat waves crawl slower across the globe and they are baking more people for a longer time with higher temperatures over larger areas, a new study finds.Since 1979, global heat waves are moving 20 percent more slowly — meaning more people stay hot longer — and they are happening 67 percent more often, according to a study in Friday’s Science Advances.
“Those heat waves are traveling slower and so slower so that basically means that ... there’s a heat wave sitting there and those heat waves could stay longer in the region,” Zhang said. “And the adverse impacts on our human society would be huge and increasing over the years.”The team conducted computer simulations showing this change was due to heat-trapping emissions that come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.