Deadly heatwaves will become more common in South Asia due to climate change, new research shows
- Health experts and scientists say that at a wet bulb temperature of 32 degrees Celsius, labour becomes unsafe and at 35 degrees the body can no longer cool itself
- If warming hits 2 degrees, the number of South Asians exposed to unsafe temperatures could rise twofold, and nearly three times as many people could face lethal heat
But the threat could be halved if the world meets a goal set under the Paris Agreement on climate change to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, researchers said in a study published this week by the American Geophysical Union, an international scientific association.
“The future looks bad for South Asia, but the worst can be avoided by containing warming to as low as possible,” Moetasim Ashfaq, a climate scientist at the US-based Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in a statement.
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Still, with global temperatures already having risen more than 1 degree, “the need for adaptation over South Asia is today, not in the future. It’s not a choice any more”, said Ashfaq, the study’s author.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said global climate-heating emissions must fall by about 45 per cent by 2030, compared to 2010 levels, to limit warming to below 2 degrees, the higher temperature goal in the Paris Agreement.
But updated plans to reduce emissions, submitted by at least 75 nations ahead of planned COP26 UN climate talks in November, barely made a dent in the huge cuts needed to meet the global climate goals a UN report said last month.