The world is warming and habitat is threatened in many regions around the equator.
At this stage, even if we can limit global warming to 2˚C above pre-industrial levels, new estimates show that the tropics and subtropics, including India, the Arabian Peninsula and sub-Saharan Africa , will experience dangerously high temperatures. Time of year days. By the year 2100.
Meanwhile, the world’s mid-latitudes will experience extreme heat waves at least every year. For example, researchers in the US city of Chicago have predicted a 16-fold increase in dangerous heat waves by the end of the century.
Our chances of escaping this fate? About 0.1 percent, given the projected probability that we limit warming to less than 1.5˚C above pre-industrial temperatures. In all likelihood, researchers say the world will have exceeded 2˚C in temperature by 2050.
In this case, the researchers say, “Extremely dangerous heat stress will be a regular feature of the climate in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Arabian Peninsula and much of the Indian subcontinent.”
Unless the world works together to implement rapid and widespread adaptation measures, many deaths are likely. But reducing temperatures as much as we can is important, because every one degree less heat will save lives.
Recent estimates show that global warming is already responsible for one in three heat-related deaths worldwide.
In view of these rates, different examinations foresee that people will pass on in record numbers in the next few decades as environmental change fixes its hold on our planet.
Notwithstanding, how people adapt to warm pressure is convoluted by different elements, like dampness. Current evaluations depend on a measurement called the intensity record, which just considers relative stickiness up to specific temperatures.
This is the traditional scale that researchers use to assess heat stress, yet recent studies have found that the human body can’t cope with as much heat and humidity as this index suggests.
As it stands, 200 °F (93 °C) on the heat index is considered the limit of what can survive.
But at 100 percent humidity, new research suggests that even young, healthy people can’t survive above 31°C.
However, in the traditional heat index, temperatures are considered dangerous when they exceed 40 °C (103 °F) and extremely dangerous when they exceed 51 °C.
These are the limits that current studies use to predict future habitats, and they are likely underestimates of what is to come.
Yet even by this measure, humanity’s prospects look grim.
Between 1979 and 1998, dangerous heat index thresholds were exceeded in the tropics and subtropics on 15 percent of days each year.
During this time, it was rare for temperatures to become extremely dangerous based on the heat index.
Sadly, the equivalent can’t be said for now, and the issue is just deteriorating.
By 2050, in the tropics, the dangerous heat index could exceed 50 percent of days per year. By 2100, it may exceed the limit on most days.
Also, about 25 percent of those days could be hot enough to exceed dangerously high levels.
“Without major emissions reductions, large parts of the global tropics and subtropics are likely to experience more dangerous heat index levels for most of the year by the end of this century,” the authors write.
“Without transformation gauges, this will significantly expand the frequency of intensity related sicknesses and decrease the capacity to work outside in numerous areas where means cultivating is significant.”
The consequences for health and society will undoubtedly be profound.
