Most of today’s children can endure historical heat waves when the planet warms up

In the last article published in the journal Scientists have examined how global warming affects people exposed to an unprecedented number of extreme climatic events, such as floods, crops and heat waves during their lives.

Using demographic data and climate models, they stated that if the average global temperatures rising by 3.5 ° C, 92% of people born in 2020 may experience unprecedented exposure to a heat wave, and 14% may experience the flood of rivers and 29% in the event of a crop failure.

The inclusion of socio -economic susceptibility indicators for their analysis showed that more sensitive populations will incur this burden disproportionately.

Background

When climate change worsens because of human activity, extreme weather events, such as heat waves, floods and drought, become more frequent, intense and durable. These events are a serious risk for human societies, especially for younger generations, which will live longer, and thus encounter a larger cumulative exhibition.

Scientists have documented the growing intensity and frequency of individual climate extremes. However, there was a limited understanding of how the exposure to the deposited will accumulate during the life of the individual, especially compared to pre -industrial conditions.

In addition, global climate policies currently place the land on the trajectory in the direction of 2.7 ° C insulation by 2100, further increasing the potential risk.

About the study

This study was aimed at estimating the number of people from various kohort births, which provide for unprecedented exposure to life (hives) to six types of extreme climatic events and how these exhibitions differ at different levels of global warming and socio -economic susceptibility.

Scientists combined the results of multi-model climate simulation and impact syndromes with global demographic data sets and socio-economic indicators to assess future exposure to six climate extremes: heat waves, crop failure, drought, river floods, fires and tropical cyclones (exhibition defined by hurricane winds flood).

They defined hives as exposure levels that exceed 99.99. Percentile of what can be expected in a pre -industrial climate (i.e. practically impossible without climate change).

The exposure was calculated at the resolution of the 0.5 ° × 0.5 ° mesh cell, and the accumulated exposure to each person in all life expectancy was estimated on the basis of their delivery cohort (1960–2020) and stay, assuming static demographic data and lack of migration.

Scientists analyzed 21 global insulation trajectories from 1.5 ° C to 3.5 ° C to 2100. For each scenario they identified the faction of delivery cohort experiencing hives for extreme and aggregated results around the world.

Testing also stratified exposure results according to socio -economic susceptibility using a global relative deprivation indicator (GDI) and the average life of the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

This made it possible to compare the forecast hives between high and low gap populations. Modeling framework took into account the internal volatility of climate and regional differences in the extreme likelihood of events, helping to isolate the influence of global warming and socio -economic conditions to accumulated cruculated exposure.

Arrangements

The study showed that a fraction of people experiencing hives to the extreme of climate increases significantly in younger delivery cohorts and higher scenarios of global warming. In the case of heat waves, the hives are projected for the 52% of the 2020 birth group, if the average average global temperatures rise by 1.5 ° C, but increases to 92% in the 3.5 ° C script.

Even Kohort from 1960 shows 16% of the exhibition, but newer generations have a much greater burden. At 3.5 ° C warming, 29% of people born in 2020 are expected to fall down and 14% to the river floods. Spatially equatorial regions are the most difficult with lower warming, but the distribution becomes almost global with higher warming.

The most -deprived of socio -economic populations consistently encounter a higher risk: in current politics trajectories, people in the most sensitive 20% (measured by GDI or low GDP) are much more exposed to hive experience than their wealthy counterparts.

While thermal waves showed the highest levels of exhibition, other extremes, such as tropical cyclones, although geographically limited to regions susceptible to hurricane winds, still influenced millions, especially when the analyzes were limited to risk regions.

In general, the study emphasizes that continued global warming is exposed to large and growing fractions of the population to historically extreme conditions, with disproportionate influence on the most vulnerable in the world. This emphasizes the moral and practical urgency of reducing the insulation and support strategy.

Conclusions

This study shows that many people, especially children, will be directed to many climate extremes, such as heat waves, floods, drought and fires, under the current insulation trajectories.

However, scientists have warned that discoveries probably underestimate the total risk, because they exclude non -local effects such as the intersection of fire smoke, adaptive reactions and demographic differences in the country. Lightness related to age, sex and disability is also not fully captured.

Despite the uncertainty in modeling some extremes, especially the hydrological ones, the approach based on the grid (0.5 ° resolution) helps more accurately estimate the located influence.

The research team emphasized that urgent action to limit global warming to 1.5 ° C – goals requiring immediate, deep emissions – at 2.7 ° C can save hundreds of millions of children from the hives, emphasizing the key importance of strong, lasting reduction of emissions to protect future generations.