In the summer of 2022, the Yangtze River Basin experienced unprecedented heat waves, drawing considerable attention from the scientific community. Affected by over a month of record-breaking high temperatures and droughts, this extreme event not only caused escalating losses to human health, the economy, and the environment, but also exacerbated food insecurity and hindered sustainable development. Therefore, a more comprehensive understanding of extreme heat in the Yangtze River Basin during the summer of 2022 is essential to identify the drivers of extreme event variability under global warming, assess the impacts of human activity and natural variability, and evaluate potential climate risks. This study first reviews the main characteristics, formation mechanisms, and causes of the extreme heat in the Yangtze River Basin in the summer of 2022, and further summarizes the research progress on the event over the past three years. The results showed that the 2022 summer high temperature in the Yangtze River Basin was a rare extreme heat event. Its occurrence was primarily driven by atmospheric circulation anomalies related to the western Pacific subtropical high and the South Asian high, the triple La Niña phenomenon, the Atlantic and Indian SST forcing, and land-atmosphere feedback mechanism (e.g., soil moisture and air temperature). In addition to natural variability, human activity is the dominant factor influencing heat extremes. Without anthropogenic forcing, such extremes would have been highly unlikely. Such rare heat waves are projected to become more frequent under ongoing global warming. Finally, the paper highlights key research challenges and knowledge gaps associated with extreme heat events.

Summer heat extremes are among the major meteorological disasters in China, posing severe threats to public health, economic and social development, and natural ecosystems. To address the nation's urgent need for managing heat-related disaster risks, we independently developed a prediction model system for summer heat extremes in China, based on new scientific insights. Since 2018, the model system has demonstrated stable and reliable predictive capabilities, relatively accurately capturing the spatial patterns and anomalies of summer heat extremes. In May 2025, using this system, we predicted that the number of summer hot days in 2024 would be 12.55 days, which is 2.69 days more than the average of normal years (1991-2020). The forecast also indicated more severe heat extremes, elevated disaster risks, and pronounced regional differences. The most significant above-normal heat extremes were expected in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin, South China, the Sichuan Basin, southern Xinjiang, northern Jiangsu, and northern Anhui. These were followed by the Beijing-Tianjin Plain, Shandong, Henan, southern Shaanxi, parts of northeastern China, parts of Gansu, and northern Ningxia. Based on these findings, we also provide response recommendations to prevent and mitigate the impacts of summer heat extremes across China.