“Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, which advises on climate change, migration and security challenges, supports the idea of assigning names and categories to heat waves so that people can be made more aware of the threats they pose and can prepare.

“Heat waves are ‘quietly, perniciously killing more people than any other climate-driven hazard,’ she said. ‘If it has a category and a name, you should pay attention.’

Her organization is a member of the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, a group of experts in public health and climate science that is pushing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. agency that communicates weather and climate predictions to the public, to adopt the change.