Within this century, parts of the Persian Gulf region could be hit with unprecedented events of deadly heat as a result of climate change, according to a study of high-resolution climate models.
The research reveals details of a business-as-usual scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, but also shows that curbing emissions could forestall these deadly temperature extremes.
The study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, was carried out by Elfatih Eltahir, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, and Jeremy Pal PhD '01 at Loyola Marymount University. They conclude that conditions in the Persian Gulf region, including its shallow water and intense sun, make it "a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in absence of significant mitigation, is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future."
Running high-resolution versions of standard climate models, Eltahir and Pal found that many major cities in the region could exceed a tipping point for human survival, even in shaded and well-ventilated spaces. Eltahir says this threshold "has, as far as we know ... never been reported for any location on Earth."
That tipping point involves a measurement called the "wet-bulb temperature" that combines temperature and humidity, reflecting conditions the human body could maintain without artificial cooling. That threshold for survival for more than six unprotected hours is 35 degrees Celsius, or about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, according to recently published research. (The equivalent number in the National Weather Service's more commonly used "heat index" would be about 165 F.)
This limit was almost reached this summer, at the end of an extreme, weeklong heat wave in the region: On July 31, the wet-bulb temperature in Bandahr Mashrahr, Iran, hit 34.6 C -- just a fraction below the threshold, for an hour or less.
But the severe danger to human health and life occurs when such temperatures are sustained for several hours, Eltahir says -- which the models show would occur several times in a 30-year period toward the end of the century under the business-as-usual scenario used as a benchmark by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Persian Gulf region is especially vulnerable, the researchers say, because of a combination of low elevations, clear sky, water body that increases heat absorption, and the shallowness of the Persian Gulf itself, which produces high water temperatures that lead to strong evaporation and very high humidity.
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I suppose it's too late to tell these guys that Dhahran, Saudi Arabia reached a heat index of 174 F in 2003 (and survived fine; cause you know, clothes and shelter have long been used to survive the desert)? Or that besides such rare flukes, there is "an inverse relationship between maximum potential temperature and maximum potential relative humidity" that prevents the heat index from getting past 160 F let alone for prolonged periods, and is a well known meteorological process (which climate change isn't going to change unless the physics/composition of our atmosphere radically alters)?
ReplyDeleteI mean, the Paris meeting is coming up soon, so gotta frontrun it with some history forgetting, "doomsday" sounding stuff?