For many Americans, summer now means confronting a punishing heatwave at some point.
The Fourth of July weekend was one such case: Triple-digit temperatures led to dozens of deaths in New Jersey, canceled holiday block parties across states and resulted in buckling rail lines.
A historic, supercharged global El Niño event isn’t going to make matters any better — with more intense heat domes forecast this year on top of rising temperatures linked to climate change, meteorologist Jeff Berardelli, told The Independent. “90 percent of models say this will be a ‘historic event’…. An event so intense it doesn’t exist in our approximately 175-year record. And the models show big impacts worldwide,” he said.
Despite these extreme conditions, large numbers of Americans appear indifferent. Some two-thirds of U.S. adults are not moderately or very worried about extreme heat, according to a recent study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
This might be partly down to how the mass media has typically portrayed summer heat — as “fun in the sun” with images of people slurping ice-creams, sunbathing and diving into lakes. “The potential danger is that these images can make extreme heat seem pleasant, ordinary or manageable — especially to people who do not already see heat as a serious health risk,” Yale University researchers told The Independent.
A silent killer
It’s not hurricanes, tornadoes or blizzards — heat is the deadliest weather condition in the U.S., causing 2,000 deaths each year, Yale research shows. The invisible killer can strain organ function and makes the heart work harder to pump blood.
Yet, positive images — not only in the news but also in ads and on social media, can lessen the sense of urgency that heat is a threat, and possibly weaken motivation to take protective actions, such as checking on vulnerable people, using cooling centers or avoiding exercise outdoors.
That’s concerning because the world is only getting hotter.
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“By associating periods of extreme heat with positive feelings, we are inadvertently welcoming a dangerously climate-changed world, rather than taking the opportunity to consider how we might work to a more resilient future,” said Sylvia Hayes, who has also conducted separate research on “fun in the sun” images at Exeter University.
Rising temperatures are largely the consequence of decades of unfettered burning of oil and gas. A decade ago, the world came together to agree on curbing global temperature rise to try to reduce human suffering – but countries have blown past those limits.
The El Niño is only compounding matters. “No telling ‘who’ gets the heat domes, but expect more intense heat domes all around the Northern Hemisphere this summer,” Berardelli, chief meteorologist and climate specialist at Florida’s WFLA-TV said.
Going forward, Yale researchers said the media should be mindful of the images used in reports about extreme heat. In a 2025 survey of nearly 4,000 adults, negative or neutral pictures – like those of people seeking cooling relief – increased respondents’ levels of concern about heatwaves and also climate change.
“It’s important to note neutral imagery was also effective (e.g., people walking or sitting in the sun under an umbrella) – we can still be effective without scaring people,” Laura Thomas Walters, one of the Yale researchers, told The Independent.
Afrooz Mosallaei – a Ph.D. candidate from Rutgers University who was also involved in Yale’s research – suggested that peoples’ interpretation of the message may be impacted more heavily by pictures because of how much faster the brain processes images versus text.
The Yale researchers suggest that news organizations build bigger photo libraries so that journalists on tight deadlines have better options to illustrate their stories — like vulnerable people showing signs of heat exhaustion, families trying to cool down or threatened infrastructure. Even an image of people under umbrellas in the sun is preferable to frolicking on a beach, they said.
And sharing more accurate images won’t negatively impact whether or not people share the stories, Mosallaei noted.
“Our findings indicate that communicators can choose images that better reflect the seriousness of extreme heat without reducing people’s willingness to share the message,” she said.
