The heat At present it has reached enormous heights, especially in June and July in Europe, generating fires and droughts that have rarely been experienced in the past: it is the clear influence of climate change. But a group of scientists explains which year will be the harshest, with the “dangerously hottest” temperatures: it will be 2100, with a heat greater than 51 ° C.
This will seriously affect the stress levels in the human being.
Using the so-called Heat Index, Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, Adrian Raftery and David Battisti published in Nature the study Probabilistic projections of an increase in heat stress due to climate change.
According to scientists, the emissions will increase global exposure to dangerous environments in the coming decades.
The researchers indicate that the Heat Index serves to quantify heat stress in humans. To do this, the effects of temperature and relative humidity on heat stress are taken into account, condensing the information into a single number, which translates into temperature.
When you talk about an “extremely dangerous” heat index, one above 51 ° C, causing heat stroke, which can lead to death in a matter of hours.
“Even if the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 2°C is met,” the researchers note, “exposure to dangerous levels of heat index is likely to increase by 50-100% in much of the tropics, and increase by a factor of 3 to 10 in many mid-latitude regions of the world.
2100, a hellish year for Earth
Vargas, Raftery and Battisti point out that, without more aggressive emission reductions than those considered possible by the projection, “by the year 2100, many people living in tropical regions are exposed to dangerously high heat index values during most days of each typical year.
Climate change, According to the United Nations Organization, refers to long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns. Although these changes may be natural, due to variations in the solar cycle, the hand of the human being has been key due to the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
The UN points out that “the burning of fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket that surrounds the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.”
And all of this we are suffering in the present. The future does not look very promising.