News outlets seeking expertise on the impact of extreme heat have called on V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. Turner spoke to The New York Times about emergency rooms nationwide struggling to treat life-threatening heat-related illnesses. “It’s difficult for us to know how many people are impacted by extreme heat when we look at emergency room data,” Turner said. Around 2,300 people were reported to have died from heat-related illnesses in the United States in 2023 — triple the annual average between 2004 and 2018 — but that number may be an undercount, since many hospitals use software that does not include codes for heat-related conditions. Turner also spoke with Spectrum News about a California ballot measure that would allow the state to borrow $10 billion to address climate change. “The investment today is going to save us in the future because we will only see worse, more intense, longer heat waves, longer heat seasons impacting more areas of the state,” Turner said.