Killer Heatwaves Set For Dramatic Rise, Researchers Warn

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  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.

MORE HEATSTROKE, LESS WORK

In steamy Bhubaneswar, for instance, in eastern Indias 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.

The problem is that the relative humidity is 82 percent, meaning the real feel of conditions is above 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Farenheit), experts say  and its not yet even noon. Monsoon showers, which would normally cool the city,
are past due.

The 27-year-old labourer said that over the last two and a half summer months he has lost close to half his average earnings because it has become impossible to work outside in searing heat.

Jitendra Murmu, another daily-wage worker, said efforts to move work to cooler parts of the day were becoming less effective.

Over summer we even rescheduled our work timing because no work for three months means no food for our children, he said. By early April we would rush to work at 5:30 a.m. when day broke, return home at 10:30 a.m. and resume at 3 in the afternoon, until sunset.

But work itself is less available. Employers and construction contractors are themselves taking it slow due the heat, he said.

Mami Patra, the owner of a small medicine shop in central Bhubaneswar, said she has seen demand for heatstroke treatments surging.

Every single day, all this summer, we get at least seven people who come to us complaining of exhaustion and asking for glucose powder packets, she said.

City doctors said the number of patients turning up with dizziness, confusion and vomiting  symptoms of heat exhaustion, a precursor to deadly heatstroke  is increasing, with patients 50 to 70 years old seemingly most affected.

Mora, the author of the University of Hawaii study, noted that the impacts of rising heat will extend far beyond simply a higher death toll, to things like people having to take longer breaks to withstand the heat and compensate for it by working longer hours.

The already substantial heat death rate also points out the limitation of many of these governments to afford the cost of adaptation, he said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

 

 

 

REUTERS