Week of sweltering US heat – is this the new normal in a warming world?

Places such as New York City, left, and Washington DC, right, experienced debilitating heat in the last week. Composite: AFP, Getty Images

The list of climate-related disasters in the US was long last week as vast swaths of the country sweated under a brutal heatwave.

There was a “mass-casualty event” of fainting high-schoolers in New Jersey as a K-pop concert was cut short in Washington DC. Young hikers had to be rescued in New Hampshire as tarmac roads buckled and melted in South Dakota and Nebraska.