Scientific American, 9 May 2025

Today’s Children Face a Lifetime of Extreme Heat because of Climate Change

Young people today will be exposed to a number of heat waves that no one would have experienced before the burning of fossil fuels started raising global temperatures.

Just over half of the children born in 2020 will face unprecedented exposure to heatwaves over their lifetime — even under a conservative projection for how climate change will unfold over the next 75 years.

The figure rises to 92% of today’s five-year-olds if more pessimistic climate predictions come to pass, and compares with just 16% of people born in 1960 under any future climate scenario.