New Delhi: Nature has already given us back squarely for exploiting it, in the form of the pandemic. If we don’t make amends now, the next killer could be heatwaves.
A draft UN report warns of dire consequences for billions if global warming continues unchecked.
Updated projections warn of unprecedented killer heatwaves on the near horizon, according to a 4,000-page Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, seen exclusively by AFP before its scheduled release in February 2022, Times of India (TOI) reported quoting AFP.
“If the world warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius – 0.4 degrees above today’s level, 14 percent of the population will be exposed to severe heatwaves at least once every five years, a significant increase in
heatwave magnitude”, the report said. Going up half a degree would add another 1.7 billion people.
The worst hit will be burgeoning megacities in the developing world that generate additional heat of their own, from Karachi to Kinshasa, Manila to Mumbai, Lagos to Manaus.
Other findings of the report
- It’s not just thermometer readings that make a difference. Heat becomes more deadly when combined with high humidity.
- Human activity has driven global temperatures up 1.1 degrees.
- Sub-Saharan Africa is especially vulnerable to lethal heatwaves in large part because it is least prepared to cope with them.
- The Mediterranean is also vulnerable to deadly incursions of hot weather.
- high heat will destroy more lives indirectly rather than by reaching levels at which the body simply shuts down.
- Higher temperatures will spread disease vectors, reduce crop yields and nutrient values, slash labour productivity, and make outdoor manual labour a life-threatening activity.
- Today’s children will witness more days with extreme heat when manual labour outside is physiologically impossible.