Cooling demand is projected to increase under climate change. However, most of the existing projections are based on rising air temperatures alone, ignoring that rising temperatures are associated with increased humidity; a lethal combination that could significantly increase morbidity and mortality rates during extreme heat events. We bridge this gap by identifying the key measures of heat stress, considering both air temperature and near-surface humidity, in characterizing the climate sensitivity of electricity demand at a national scale. Here we show that in many of the high energy consuming states, such as California and Texas, projections based on air temperature alone underestimates cooling demand by as much as 10–15% under both present and future climate scenarios. Our results establish that air temperature is a necessary but not sufficient variable for adequately characterizing the climate sensitivity of cooling load, and that near-surface humidity plays an equally important role.

气候变化导致制冷需求预计将增加。然而，大多数现有预测仅基于气温上升，忽略了气温上升与湿度增加有关；这是一种致命的组合，可能会显着增加极端高温事件期间的发病率和死亡率。我们通过确定热应激的关键指标，考虑气温和近地表湿度，来弥补这一差距，以描述全国范围内电力需求的气候敏感性。在这里，我们表明，在许多高能耗州，例如加利福尼亚州和德克萨斯州，在当前和未来的气候情景下，仅基于气温的预测就低估了制冷需求高达 10-15%。我们的结果表明，空气温度是充分表征冷负荷气候敏感性的必要但不充分的变量，并且近地表湿度起着同样重要的作用。