CLIMATE CHANGE: MORE THAN 3BN COULD LIVE IN EXTREME HEAT BY 2070
More than three billion people will be living in
places with “near un-liveable” temperatures by 2070, according to a
new study.
Unless
greenhouse gas emissions fall, large numbers of people will experience average
temperatures hotter than 29C.
This is considered
outside the climate “niche” in which humans have thrived for the past
6,000 years.
Co-author of the
study Tim Lenton told the BBC: “The study hopefully puts climate change in
a more human terms”.
Researchers used data
from United Nations population projections and a 3C warming scenario based on
the expected global rise in temperature. A UN report found that even with
countries keeping to the Paris climate agreement, the world was on course for
a 3C rise.
According to the
study, human populations are concentrated into narrow climate bands with most
people residing in places where the average temperature is about 11-15C. A
smaller number of people live in areas with an average temperature of 20-25C.
People have mostly lived in these
climate conditions for thousands of years.
However should,
global warming cause temperatures to rise by three degrees, a vast number of
people are going to be living in temperatures considered outside the
“climate niche”.
Mr Lenton, climate specialist and
director of the global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, conducted
the study with scientists from China, the US and Europe.
He told the BBC:
“The land warms up faster than the ocean so the land is warming more than
three degrees. Population growth is projected to be in already hot places,
mostly sub-Saharan Africa, so that shifts the average person to a hotter
temperature.
“It’s
shifting the whole distribution of people to hotter places which themselves are
getting hotter and that’s why we find the average person on the planet is
living in about 7C warmer conditions in the 3C warmer world.”
Areas projected
to be affected include northern Australia, India, Africa, South America and
parts of the Middle East.
The study raises
concerns about those in poorer areas who will be unable to shelter from the
heat.
“For me,
the study is not about the rich who can just get inside an air-conditioned
building and insulate themselves from anything. We have to be concerned with
those who don’t have the means to isolate themselves from the weather and the
climate around them,” Mr Lenton said.
Mr Lenton says
the main message from the team’s findings is that “limiting climate change
could have huge benefits in terms of reducing the number of people projected to
fall outside of the climate niche.
“It’s about
roughly a billion people for each degree of warming beyond the present. So for
every degree of warming, we could be saving a huge amount of change in people’s
livelihoods.”
