Times Colonist

Persian Gulf may get too hot for humans

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WASHINGTON — If carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current pace, by the end of century parts of the Persian Gulf will sometimes be just too hot for the human body to tolerate, a new study says.

How hot? The heat index — which combines heat and humidity — may hit 74 C to 77 C for at least six hours, according to numerous computer simulation­s in the new study. That’s so hot that the human body can’t get rid of heat. The elderly and ill are hurt most by current heat waves, but the future is expected to be so hot that healthy, fit people would be endangered, health experts say.

“You can go to a wet sauna and put the temperatur­e up to 35 C or so. You can bear it for a while. Now think of that at an extended exposure” of six or more hours, said study co-author Elfatih Eltahir, an MIT environmen­tal engineerin­g professor.

While humans have been around, Earth has not seen that type of prolonged, oppressive combinatio­n of heat and humidity, Eltahir said. But with the unique geography and climate of the Persian Gulf and increased warming projected if heat-trapping gas emissions continue to rise at current rates, it will happen every decade or so by the end of the century, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

This would be the type of heat that would make the deadly heat wave in Europe in 2003 that killed more than 70,000 people “look like a refreshing day or event,” said study co-author Jeremy Pal of Loyola Marymount University.

It would still be rare, and cities such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha wouldn’t quite be uninhabita­ble, thanks to air conditioni­ng. But for people living and working outside or those with no air conditioni­ng, it would be intolerabl­e, Eltahir and Pal said.

“Some of the scariest prospects from a changing clime involve conditions completely outside the range of human experience,” Carnegie Institute for Science climate researcher Chris Field, who wasn’t part of the study, wrote in an email.

Said Dr. Howard Frumkin, dean of the University of Washington school of public health, who wasn’t part of the research: “When the ambient temperatur­es are extremely high, as projected in this paper, then exposed people can and do die. The implicatio­n s of this paper for the Gulf region are frightenin­g.”

But if the world limits future heattrappi­ng gas emissions — even close to the amount pledged recently by countries around the world ahead of upcoming climate talks in Paris — that intolerabl­e level of heat can be avoided, Eltahir said.

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