Heat Waves and Security in a Warming Century: Reframing a Systems Threat

Extreme heat neither displaces nor trivialises higher-profile threats. It amplifies them. It undermines public safety while straining electricity and water systems, transport networks, and health care at the same time over several days. For defence and in terior ministries, this translates into tighter training schedules and a rise in heat illness among personnel.

It also drives more frequent humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief deployments, which erode core missions unless funding and doctrine keep pace. Recent episodes illustrate the point: record power demand and rolling outages during heatwaves in parts of South Asia, rail buckling in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, aircraft facing weight restrictions during hot spells in cities such as Phoenix and Madrid and large-scale military support to wildfire evacuations in Canada and Greece.

Recent events across regions illustrate how extreme heat can precipitate security-relevant outcomes and which populations bear the burden.

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