"Princeton researchers have provided the first estimation of the potential damage from back-to-back, or compound heat waves, which the authors found will increase as global warming continues. But government warning systems and health care outreach do not currently calculate the risks of sequential heat waves. Instead, risk and response are determined by the severity of individual episodes of extreme temperatures."

Jane Baldwin, lead author on the paper published in the journal Earth's Future, is a postdoctoral researcher in the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI) and the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE), and receives support from the High Meadows Foundation.

Continue reading this story on the Princeton University News site.