Heat Wave Expands Across US, Endangering Millions

July 29, 2026

An atmospheric heat dome is creating high temperatures across a huge swath of the United States, from the Southwest to the Gulf Coast and into the Midwest and Great Plains, with “roughly 80 million people facing heat advisories,” AP reports. With climate change expected to make hotter weather more frequent and extreme, Harrison Cook explores in Issues’s Future Tense Fiction series how a “shade technician” might help people cope. But Pope L. Moseley responds that “extreme heat is pushing up against our physiological limits,” concluding that “we can’t adapt our way out of the problem—we need to confront it directly.”