When extreme weather heads your way, the warning matters almost as much as the storm itself. Timely, accurate forecasts can nudge people to change plans, get out of harm’s way, or make quick decisions when it counts.
So the question hanging over a warming world is pretty simple—and kind of uncomfortable: could improving weather forecasts actually save lives as heat gets worse?
Derek Lemoine, an Arizona Public Service professor of economics at the University of Arizona Eller College of Management, is part of a team that recently tackled that. Misryoum newsroom reported that the research, published in the journal PNAS, suggests that improving short-term temperature forecasts—matched with expert predictions of technological development—could reduce U.S. mortality from heat by 18% to 25% in the year 2100. Lemoine’s point is not that climate change won’t still hurt people. It’s more like: if the heat rises, better warnings can help cancel out some of the extra damage.
That distinction matters. “That could offset the extra heat-related deaths caused by climate change,” Lemoine said, according to Misryoum reporting. “To be clear, we would still rather not experience the climate change – but at least we can find ways to potentially cancel out the increased mortality.” He also emphasized that while extreme cold can be deadly, people mainly lean on weather forecasts to avoid heat. And with climate change expected to increase the frequency of extreme heat, accurate forecasting becomes the kind of tool you don’t think about until you really need it.
Misryoum newsroom reported that Lemoine worked with researchers from Columbia University, the University of Oregon, and Princeton University. To get from theory to numbers, they used day-ahead National Weather Service forecasts across the contiguous United States dating back to the summer of 2004. They paired those forecasts with actual weather data collected by Oregon State University’s PRISM Climate Group—tens of thousands of observations from stations across the country, every day. Then they layered in county-level mortality records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks vital events nationwide.
After filtering out deaths caused by other factors, the team found that forecasting accuracy is a key part of the temperature-mortality link. The biggest risk shows up when forecasts underestimate hot conditions. Lemoine said the researchers concluded that more accurate forecasts could reduce deaths on dangerously hot days. From there, the study zoomed out to the future—how improvements in forecasting technology might change outcomes. In early 2025, the team surveyed professional meteorologists to gauge how forecasting technology might evolve, including the role of artificial intelligence, the effects of climate change, and changes in funding and staffing. Those inputs became three forecasting scenarios: one matching meteorologists’ most optimistic expectations, one based on their most pessimistic projections, and one in which weather prediction becomes perfectly accurate.
Then the researchers ran those scenarios against multiple climate conditions: a no-climate-change case where temperatures from 2095 to 2100 resemble those from 2015 to 2020, a warming scenario of 1.6 degrees Celsius, another of 2.7 degrees Celsius, and an extreme scenario where the contiguous United States warms by 3.8 degrees Celsius. Depending on both technological progress and climate change severity, Misryoum editorial desk noted that there are scenarios where improved weather forecasts could largely offset projected increases in heat-related deaths. But there’s a flip side too: if investment declines and forecast quality deteriorates, lower-quality predictions could contribute to more heat-related fatalities.
Lemoine framed it in economic terms, too—something we don’t always hear in weather stories. “Economists aren’t valuing life itself,” he said, according to Misryoum reporting. “We’re valuing reductions in the risk of dying.” He added that in cost-benefit analysis, the standardized value assigned to lives saved can end up dominating the calculation, and in this case, the benefits from improved forecasting translate into a very high economic value.
On a hot afternoon, you can almost feel it before you see it—the air stuck to your skin, the faint smell of pavement getting baked. And if the warnings are sharper, people have more chances to act before heat turns into tragedy. The study’s message lands there, even if it’s dressed up in scenarios and data: forecasting isn’t just weather—it’s public safety, and it might become even more important as the baseline temperature keeps creeping up, or maybe not creeping, actually…
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