In my reporting career, I've carried out interviews in 50 degree Celsius (122F) heat in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, with a river of sweat raging down my back.

I've spent unbearably sweltering nights without air conditioning getting into the shower every hour with my clothes on before returning to bed to try to grab a little sleep before the moisture evaporated.

In Delhi, where I used to live and where power outages on hot days were normal, I regularly found myself on 45C (113F) days elbow deep in black grease in the shed out back, desperately trying to get the old tractor engine we relied on for generator power to start.

Extreme heat, without the right means to cope with it, can be debilitating and deadly - something too many of us are now discovering as climate change brings unprecedented heatwaves in the United States, Canada and many more places around the world.

The dangers now feel closer, and more personal, than they used to for many of us. For me, nothing was quite as scary as calling my parents in Seattle as an unprecedented 42C (107F) "heat dome" hovered over the least-air-conditioned big city in the country.

My shirtless 87-year-old father answered my video call from the basement, where he and my mother had taken refuge as they tried to stay cool as temperatures soared upstairs. They were fine, he assured me - and ultimately they were.

But scientists were confounded by an event not forseen in climate models, one that broke the previous Seattle heat record by an astonishing 8 degrees Celsius (14F) - and one they admitted could happen again, just about anywhere.

My parents are now looking into an air-source heat pump that would give them green air conditioning as well as greener heat. This week I bought a small efficient air conditioner for my own home in London - just as insurance.

I've spent most of the last decade writing about the rising threat of climate-driven extreme heat, and how we might better cope with it, from potentially naming heatwaves to draw more attention to their invisible threat, to the many innovative ways cities are battling heat risk, as well as the ways the poor are particularly vulnerable. 

Now I'd love your help: What should we write about next, as the world confronts worsening extreme heat? I'd love to hear your ideas, and find new ways to take this hot story forward. Just get in touch, using the link at the bottom of this newsletter.

While you're cooking up some ideas, have a look at our latest explainer video  - tucked into this story on extreme heat risks.

See you next week!

Laurie

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