Will Australia get too hot to bear?
In the warmest regions of the world, summer heat records are set all the time. Scientists warn that some countries are going to experience lethal temperatures, now that global warming seeming inevitable.
In July 2016, when a weather station in North-Western Kuwait measured 54 degrees, it may have been the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth. The potential record was set during an unusually hot summer in the already warm Middle East and North Africa.
In Morocco, thermometers suddenly indicated at temperature of 46.7 degrees, in Saudi Arabia, people were struggling with temperatures of 50+ degrees, and in Basra, Iraq, temperatures came close to those in Kuwait with 53.9 degrees.
For decades, scientists have been able to see that human activities are changing Earth’s climate drastically. Throughout the world, one heat record is followed by the next, but in the countries on the Persian Gulf, the climate change is so extreme and develops so fast that the major cities could literally become uninhabitable this century.
That was the gloomy prediction in a study by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Loyola Marymount University published in the Nature Climate Change journal in 2015. The study focused on the wet-bulb temperature, which is a measure of heat that – unlike ordinary temperature readings – includes air humidity. A wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees is considered the limit of human survival. If the temperature is higher than that, the combination of extreme heat and high humidity will mean than the body is no longer able to cool itself and give off heat via sweat. Even healthy people will only be able to survive outside for a few hours.
However, this limit could be reached in cities on the Persian Gulf in less than 100 years. According to the study, the people of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha will be among the first to feel the severe consequences of global warming. According to the scientists' calculations, after 2017, the people living along on the Persian Gulf coast will experience summer days every or every second decade with wet-bulb temperatures that exceed the human limit.
HEAT WAVES ARE MORE COMMON
The changes in the Middle East and North Africa are among the most concrete and dangerous consequences of climate change, but throughout the world, meteorologists register ever higher temperatures.
In 2003, Europe was struck by a heat wave that cost 70,000 people their lives, and in 2010, the warmest summer in 90 years killed about 54,000 people in Russia. Since 1998, more than 77,000 Europeans have died as a result of the heat, making heat waves the most hazardous natural disaster on the continent. I n 2012, the European Environmental Agency published a report, which concluded that all of Europe is experiencing higher temperatures, and that the heat waves occur more often and last
longer than Europeans have been used to. The report also predicted that the rising temperatures brought about by climate change will make the number of casualties increase in the centuries to come.
NEW RECORDS EVERY YEAR
In 2015, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that the previous year had been the warmest on Earth since the recording of global temperatures began in 1880.
The next year, both organizations made the same conclusion: 2015 had beaten all previous records and was averagely 0.16 degrees warmer than 2014. That is the largest margin ever in connection with a temperature record. The month of December also set a record by being 1.1 degrees warmer than the average of the entire 20th century. That is the largest deviation of one single month ever recorded.
So far, there is no indication that the trend is about to stop. In 2016, scientists proclaimed June to be the warmest month ever recorded, and at the same time, prognoses for 2016 showed that the year would probably also beat the records of the two previous years.
The ominous records have already influenced the life style of people in the world’s warmest regions. In the summer of 2016, when temperatures exceeded 42 degrees in Iraq, public sector workers were allowed to take time off, but they still came to their offices to enjoy the cooling effect of air conditioning.
THE WORLD CAN STILL BE SAVED
Luckily, most scientists believe that the trend can still be reversed. The message of the 2014 UN climate report, which was prepared by more than 800 experts, was that the average temperature increase on Earth could be kept below two degrees, if world leaders took action right away, reducing CO2 emissions drastically.
To curb the fatal heat waves in Europe immediately, scientists from the ETH Zurich have made a wide-ranging proposal. In a study, they discovered that fields that remain uncultivated after the harvest reflect more sunlight than fields that are cultivated. The colour of the unploughed fields is lighter and so, they reflect the sunlight more efficiently, giving off heat.
Some measurements indicated that the unploughed fields could reflect 30 % of the sunlight, whereas cultivated fields only reflected 20 %. Scientists’ model simulations showed that the difference means that the reflection of uncultivated fields is consequently 50 % higher. According to the Swiss scientists, that could be enough to reduce the temperatures of local heat waves by up to two degrees.
Global warming is no longer a remote and vague problem. At this point in time, the heat has already fallen on the entire world, threatening to force millions of people to leave their homes, but if the countries on the Persian Gulf listen to scientists and act now, they could still manage to curb the tremendous temperature increases.