Killer heatwaves set for dramatic rise
BHUBANESWAR, India: Nearly one in three people around the world is already exposed to deadly heatwaves, and that will rise to nearly half of people by 2100 even if the world moves aggressively to cut climate- changing emissions, scientists warned Monday.
If emissions continue to rise at their current pace, however, three in four people in the world will face deadly heat by the turn of the century, a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change said.
“People are talking about the future when it comes to climate change, but what we found from this paper is that this is already happening í and this is obviously going to get a lot worse,” said Camilo Mora, lead author of the study and a geography professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
By 2100, for instance, New York is likely to experience around 50 days a year with combined temperature and humidity exceeding the threshold in which people have previously died, researchers said.
In already hot southern U. S. cities such as Orlando and Houston, deadly heatwaves could last nearly the entire summer period, the study found.
But the most serious risks will be in tropical areas, where temperatures are already closer to the danger threshold and where heat can last more of the year, rather than just during the summer, researchers said.
“Warming at the poles has been one of the iconic climatic changes. Our study shows, however, that it is warming in the tropics what will pose the greatest risk,” said Iain Caldwell, a co- author of the report and a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
With temperatures already high, “it takes very little warming for conditions to turn deadly in the tropics,” he said in a statement.
In steamy Bhubaneswar, for instance, in eastern India’s Odisha state, gardener Basudev Singh is bathed in sweat after two hours of early morning weeding, despite the temperature gauge showing 35 degrees Celsius ( 95 degrees Farenheit) – usually considered a bearable temperature in this part of India. — Reuters