Extreme Heat Will Make Parts of the Middle East and Africa Uninhabitable by 2050
“Climate change will significantly worsen the living conditions in the Middle East and in North Africa,” noted Lelieveld in a statement. “Prolonged heat waves and desert dust storms can render some regions uninhabitable, which will surely contribute to the pressure to migrate.”
For the study, the researchers based their calculations on two scenarios, one in which global emissions of greenhouse gases start decreasing by 2040 (i.e. we succeed at meeting the climate target set at the recent UN Climate Summit in Paris), the other based on the assumption that greenhouse gases will continue to increase unabated (usually referred to as the “business-as-usual scenario.”). In the latter scenario, the mean surface temperature of our planet will increase by more than 4ºC compared to pre-industrial times.
Unfortunately, both scenarios yielded dramatic temperature rises in these desert regions, particularly during the summer months when it’s already very hot. Parched desert surfaces cannot cool by the evaporation of groundwater, and since the balance of surface energy is controlled by heat radiation, this makes the greenhouse gas effect even worse.
More: Extreme Heat Will Make Parts of the Middle East and Africa Uninhabitable by 2050