Just before Ana Clara Benevides lost consciousness, she likely found it hard to breathe.
Packed with 60,000 people in Rio de Janeiro’s Nilton Santos Stadium for a Nov. 17 Taylor Swift concert — amidst a heat wave with a “real feel” of 138F (59C) — the 23-year-old would have been unbearably thirsty, her heart beating fast, her skin hot. Benevides fainted as Swift sang “Cruel Summer,” the second song of the set. Four hours later, she would be dead from heat exhaustion.
Benevides’s death, during a record hot austral spring that researchers later attributed to climate change, made international news as a tragic anomaly. Nilton Santos Stadium, Taylor Swift’s team, and T4F Entretenimento SA — which promoted the event — did not respond to requests for comment.
But Swift’s show came on the heels of other instances of extreme weather harming people at outdoor concerts. During a heat wave last July, 17 people were hospitalized for heat-related illnesses — including two cardiac arrests — at an Ed Sheeran show in Pittsburgh. A month earlier, 100 people were injured by hail at a Louis Tomlinson concert in Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater.
Taken individually, each of these events can seem like bad luck — part of the vagaries of nature. But stitched together, a clearer pattern emerges: Climate change is ushering in more extreme weather worldwide, and with it, greater risks for outdoor events. Many venues, o