Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
Temperatures rising to 40 degrees Celsius and above will now be called “cruelly hot” or “kokusho-bi” in Japan as heatwave days become increasingly common.
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said this new label would help them warn people more clearly about dangerously hot weather.
Last year was Japan’s hottest summer since the country started keeping records in 1898. This is happening all over the world because of climate change.
To come up with the new category, JMA conducted a survey and received responses from 478,000 people before adopting “cruelly hot”, which was the most popular.
The new category joins terms already used by JMA for other warm and hot temperatures.
