People pour water over themselves at a broken water pipe during a heat wave in Karachi, Pakistan on June 29, 2015. Credit: Asim Afeez/Bloomberg via Getty Images While scientists warn with increasing urgency that global warming is sharply increasing the likelihood of deadly heat waves , many regions are doing little to protect vulnerable populations. Recent research shows that the global death toll from extreme heat is rising, but still, “Large parts of society don’t think of heat as a threat,” said University of Oxford University climate scientist Fredi Otto after researchers unveiled a series of new extreme heat studies at the European Geosciences Union online conference last month. The research discussed at the conference suggests that many models are underestimating the short-term threat to the most vulnerable areas—densely populated tropical regions—and that the threats aren’t clearly communicated. And a study released in late April showed that, in the […]