“Extremely dangerous” heat that’s almost unheard of today will occur more often in several regions, a study says.
As global temperatures rise, people in the tropics, including places like India and Africa’s Sahel region, will likely face dangerously hot conditions almost daily by the end of the century — even as the world reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows.
In both, scientists have a really good sense of the likelihood of various scenarios. For this study, we combined those estimates to get a likelihood in the future of having dangerous and life-threatening temperatures. But the odds of the number of “dangerous” days are increasing as the planet warms. We’ll likely have about the same weather variability as today, but it’s all happening on top of a higher average temperature. So, the likelihood of extremely hot conditions increases.
In the tropics, such as parts of India, the heat index right now can exceed the dangerous level for a few weeks a year. It’s been like that for the past 20 to 30 years. By 2050, those conditions are likely to occur over several months each year, we found. And by the end of the century, many places will see those conditions most of the year.
Northern India could see over a month per year in extremely dangerous conditions. Africa’s Sahel region, where poverty is widespread, could see a few weeks of extremely dangerous conditions per year.
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