Projections show spikes in dangerously hot days for the tropics if the rate of warming continues.
Scientists are learning what global warming will mean for daily temperatures across the world and what adaptation and mitigation will be required to protect people from dangerous heat.
Heatwaves have killed more Australians than all other natural disasters combined and projections by scientists from Harvard University in the US suggest more are on the way.
The projections, published in Communications Earth and Environment, suggest a child born in some parts of Australia today could be living through regular days of “dangerous heat” by the time they retire.
And the picture worsens the closer one moves to the equator, with the picture for the Indian subcontinent and subtropical Africa, in particular, facing more than 150 days of “dangerous heat” a year.
The research uses the already observed global temperature increase of over 1°C (on pre-industrial baselines) and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, and models a future temperature increase scenario of a 1.8°C average increase in global temperatures by 2050, and 3°C by the end of the century.
The American heat index – an indicator that classifies the apparent daily temperatures as posing either “dangerous” (likely onset of heat exhaustion-related symptoms at 40°C) or “extremely dangerous” (potentially leading to heat stroke and increased risk of fatality from 51°C) – is then used to indicate how many dangerously hot days will occur around the world, based on these projections.
Too hot to handle?
Australia is accustomed to regular heatwaves – multiple summer days over 40°C is not unheard of in the southeast of the country and even higher in the inland and northwest.
It’s when the humidity spikes those temperatures become dangerous – this is what heat indices consider.
Median projections from Harvard research suggest a city like Darwin could average between 50 and 100 ‘dangerous’ days each year by 2050, and more than a hundred by 2100.
The north-west coast of Western Australia could also see two weeks’ worth of ‘extremely dangerous’ days.
For the southern capitals that barely experienced a dangerously hot day in the past, even the five on average predicted by Harvard each year may be dangerous.
And this is a median scenario. The risk will reduce if constructive action to mitigate global warming is taken. And will get worse if not.
Using temperature averages like those in this global study provides a starting point for climate scientists to describe future scenarios and for communities to respond.
As Associate Professor Ailie Gallant from Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and the Environment explains, small increases in average predictions often hide jumps in temperature extremes.
It changes at the extremes which pull averages higher.
“The thing with climate change is that you expect shifts in what we might call the temperature distribution,” says Gallant.
It’s not just the hot weather, it’s the way we respond
Heatwaves are indirect killers, working with other morbidities to bring about deaths earlier than may have been anticipated.
While not involved in the Harvard research, Professor Richard Franklin from James Cook University’s School of Public Health, Medical and Vet sciences says such predictions are similar to modelling done in Australia.
Franklin’s research looks at the health impacts of hazardous events and he recently co-authored a study reviewing the impact of heatwaves on health service demand for Queensland’s Department of Environment and Science.
“You add heat into what are already stressed people – they’ve got a chronic disease or other sorts of conditions like cancer or cardiovascular disease – they’re dying and the body just can’t cope,” Franklin says.
The social implications of hot weather go beyond mortality predictions.
Source: Cosmos Magazine
