Pictures: When heatwaves created disasters around the world

The 1910s – 1911 Eastern North America heat wave killed between 380 and 2,000 people. In July 1911, along the East Coast of the United States, temperatures climbed into the 90s and stayed there for days and days, killing 211 people in New York alone. Above, people sleeping in the park in New York during the 1911 heat wave.

Massive heatwaves across North America were persistent in the 1930s. The longest continuous string of 38 °C (100 °F) or higher temperatures was reached for 101 days in Yuma, Arizona, during 1937, and the highest temperatures ever reached in Canada were recorded in two locations in Saskatchewan in July 1937. Amid a sweltering summer heatwave, the temperature reached a record-high 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Kansas City on August 14, 1936. These high temperatures in the summer of 1936 remain the most extreme in modern North American history. Compounding the problem, virtually no one had air conditioning in their own homes in the 1930s. The consequence was a nationwide death toll of between 4,500 and 5,000 lives lost, making it among the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Kansas City merely coped as best as it could.

In 1995, the Chicago heat wave produced record-high dew point levels and heat indices in Chicago and Wisconsin; temperatures reached as high as 41°C (106 °F), which led to at least 778 deaths. Above, workers wheel a body to refrigerated trucks outside the Cook County morgue during the deadly Chicago heatwave. The heatwave also heavily impacted the wider Midwestern region, with additional deaths in both St. Louis, Missouri and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The 2003 European heatwave led to the hottest summer on record in Europe since at least 1540. France was hit especially hard. The heatwave led to health crises in several countries and combined with drought to create a crop shortfall in parts of Southern Europe. Above, people in the large pool of the Trocadero fountain overlooking the Eiffel Tower during the heatwave that blasted Paris.

In the 1990s – cities across the UK broke their all-time temperature records in the dramatic 1990 UK heatwave when temperatures peaked at 37°C (99 °F). This led to one of the hottest Augusts on record, records going back to 1659—people at Bournemouth Beach in Bournemouth, Britain.

The 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave was a heatwave that commenced in late January and led to record-breaking prolonged high temperatures in the region. The heatwave is considered one of the, if not the, most extreme in the region's history. During the heatwave, fifty separate locations set various records for consecutive, highest daytime and overnight temperatures. The highest temperature recorded during the heatwave was 48.8 °C (119.8 °F) in Hopetoun, Victoria, a record for the state. The heatwave generated extreme fire conditions causing many bushfires in the affected region, contributing to the extreme bushfire conditions on 7 February, also known as the Black Saturday bushfires, which claimed 173 lives in Victoria.

Between April and May 2015, a heatwave occurred in India, killing more than 2200 people in different geographical regions. Daytime temperatures hovered between 45 and 47 °C (113 and 117 °F) in parts of two states over the weekend, 3–7 °C (5.4–12.6 °F) above normal. Andhra Pradesh was the hardest hit, with 1,636 people dying from the heat since mid-April, a government statement said. Above, women fetching water from an opening in a dried-up lake in Chennai, India.

Starting June 20–21, 2015, a severe heatwave has killed more than 2500 people in Karachi, Pakistan. An extreme heatwave with temperatures as high as 49 °C (120 °F) struck southern Pakistan, causing deaths and people from dehydration and heatstroke, mainly in Sindh province and Karachi's capital city.

In China, from July to August 2013, the South continued to experience an unusually severe heatwave with exceptionally high temperatures. In multiple regions of Zhejiang, Chongqing, Shanghai, Hunan, and other areas, the temperatures soared to over 40 degrees Celsius and lasted for a long time. Above, people try to cool off at a water park in Suining, China.

People rest at the Oregon Convention Center cooling station in Oregon, Portland on June 28, 2021, as a heatwave moves over much of the United States. Swathes of the United States and Canada endured record-setting heat on June 27, 2021, forcing schools and COVID-19 testing centers to close and the postponement of an Olympic athletics qualifying event, with forecasters warning of worse to come. The village of Lytton in British Columbia broke the record for Canada's all-time high, with a temperature of 46.6 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit), said Environment Canada.