WASHINGTON–Residents of South Asia already periodically experience heat waves at the current level of warming. But a new study projecting tutar heat stress residents of the region will experience in the future finds with 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the population’s exposure için Isı stresi will nearly triple.

Sınırlama warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will likely reduce that impact by half, but deadly heat stress will become commonplace across South Asia, göre Yeni bir çalışma in Jeofizik Araştırma Mektupları, AGU’s journal publishing high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences.

İle almost one quarter of the world’s population living in South Asia, the new study underlines the urgency of addressing climate change.

“The future looks bad for South Asia, but the worst can be avoided by containing warming to Mümkün olduğunca düşük," dedim Moetasim Ashfaq, a computational climate scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and corresponding author of the new study. “The need for adaptation over South Asia is today, not in the future. It’s not a choice anymore.”

Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution, according to the Hükümetlerarası İklim Değişikliği Paneli. On the current climate trajectory, it may reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming in 2040. This deadline leaves little time for South Asian countries to adapt. “Only half a degree increase from today is going to cause a widespread increase in these events,” Ashfaq said.

A hot region getting hotter

People living in South Asia are especially vulnerable to deadly sıcaklık waves because the alan already experiences very hot, humid summers. Much of the population live in yoğun nüfuslu şehirler without regular access to air conditioning, and about 60% perform agricultural work and yapamaz escape the heat by staying indoors.

In the new study, the researchers used climate simulations and projections of future population growth to estimate the number of people who will experience dangerous levels of heat stress Güney Asya'da at warming levels of 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. They estimated the wet bulb temperature residents will experience, which is similar to the heat index, onun gibi hesaba katmak nem yanısıra sıcaklık. A wet bulb temperature of 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is considered to be the point when labor becomes unsafe, and 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) is the limit to human survivability - ne zaman body can no longer cool itself.

Their analysis suggests 2 at derece warming, the population’s poz to unsafe labor temperatures irade rise more than two-fold, and maruz kalmak lethal temperatures rises 2.7 zamanlar, as nazaran son yıl.

Engellemeye warming to 1.5 santigrat derece will likely kes şunu poz in yarım, fakat large numbers of people across South Asia will yine de deneyim aşırı sıcaklıklar. An increase in heat events that create unsafe labor conditions are likely to occur in major crop producing regions in India, such as West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, and in Pakistan in Punjab and Sindh. Sahil bölgeleri ve şehir merkezleri gibi Karachi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Peshawar vardır Ayrıca olması muhtemeldir ağır şekilde etkilenmiş, araştırmaya göre.

“Even at 1.5 degrees, South Asia will have serious consequences in terms of heat stress,” Ashfaq dedim. "Bu yüzden there is a need to radically alter the current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions".

The results differ from a similar study conducted in 2017, Hangi tahmin o sıcak hava dalgası of lethal temperatures will occur in South Asia toward the end of the 21st yüzyıl. The Araştırmacılar şüpheli the earlier study is too conservative, as deadly sıcak hava dalgasıs have already hit the region in the past. In 2015, large parts of Pakistan and India experienced the fifth deadliest heat dalga in the recorded history, which caused about 3,500 heat-related deaths.

“A policy framework is very much needed to fight against heat stress and heat wave-related problems,” said T.V. Lakshmi Kumar, an atmospheric scientist at Hindistan'ın SRM Institute of Science and Technology who was not involved in the work. “India has already committed to reduce emissions to combat climate change issues."

The study was supported by National Climate?Computing Research Center, which is located within ORNL’s National Center for Computational Sciences and supported under a Strategic Partnership Project between Department of Energy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Notes for Journalists
This research study will be freely available for 30 days. Download a PDF copy of the paper here. Neither the paper nor this press release is under embargo.

Başlık:
"Deadly heat stress to become commonplace across South Asia already at 1.5°C of global warming"

Yazarlar:
Moetasim Ashfaq, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Fahad Saeed, Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany

Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany