Nearly three-quarters of the world's population will live in areas with constant heat waves and abnormally high summer temperatures by the beginning of the next century, scientists say in an article published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“The list of possible scenarios for future developments is constantly shrinking. When it comes to heatwaves, we now have a choice between horrible and very dire scenarios. Many people are already dying from such heatwaves today, and even the fight against climate change will not save us from the fact that the number of victims in the future will only increase,”says Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (USA).
One of the consequences of global warming are the so-called “extreme weather events” - periods of abnormal heat in winter or cold in summer, heat waves, weekly heavy rains, droughts and other phenomena associated with “wrong” weather. For example, the flood in Krymsk in 2012 and the summer heat in Russia in 2010 are considered some of the most striking examples.
As Academician Igor Mokhov noted in an interview with RIA Novosti, the frequency of such phenomena in the future will only grow as global warming develops, and they will cover ever larger territories. This will lead, as the calculations of Western climatologists show, to a sharp increase in mortality - each "extra" degree of heat in the summer will increase the number of deaths by 5%.
Mora and his colleagues decided to find out how the situation with heat waves will change by 2100 if humanity completely abandons all measures to curb global warming, and what will happen if they are fully implemented.
The number of abnormally hot days in 2100 in different parts of the Earth / Mora et al. / Nature Climate Change
To do this, scientists analyzed all cases of abnormally high temperatures in summer, recorded on all continents since 1980, and identified those regions where heat waves caused the death of people. In total, they managed to find over 1,900 points where similar things have already happened, and used this data to make predictions for the next century.
Calculations have shown that over 74% of the world's population by 2100 will be in zones where every second summer will be dominated not only by high temperatures, but also by a high level of humidity, which prevents the human body from cooling through sweat evaporation.
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In some cities, such as New York and Moscow, heat waves will last for about 50 days. Tropical and equatorial regions will be even more affected, where heat waves will be virtually constant throughout the year. The territory of India, Brazil and Southeast Asia will become unsuitable for human habitation by the end of the century.
Accordingly, the death rate from heatstrokes, heart attacks and other consequences of overheating of the body will rise sharply if the world's leading states completely abandon the Paris agreements and other measures to combat global warming.
On the other hand, the implementation of all these measures, as Mora and his colleagues admit, will not eliminate, but will only slightly slow down the expansion of the "abnormal heat" zone. As the calculations of scientists show, in this case, periods of high air temperature will affect about 48% of the world's population and about 25% of its territory.
Therefore, Mora concludes, humanity should now begin to prepare for the fact that the summer heat will be as great a threat to life as the winter frosts.