The Persian Gulf, the heartland of the global oil industry, will suffer heatwaves beyond the limit of human survival if climate change is unchecked, according to a new study.
The extreme heatwaves will affect Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and coastal cities in Iran as well as posing a deadly threat to millions of hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, when the religious festival falls in the summer.
The study says that the extreme heatwaves, more intense than anything ever experienced on Earth, would begin after 2070 and that the hottest days of today would by then be a near-daily occurrence.
Illustration: Yusha
“Our results expose a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in the absence of significant [carbon cuts], is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future,” said Jeremy Pal and Elfatih Eltahir, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writing in the journal Nature Climate Change.
They said the future climate for many locations in the Gulf would be like today’s extreme climate in the desert of Northern Afar, on the African side of the Red Sea, where there are no permanent human settlements at all.
However, the research also showed that cutting greenhouse gas emissions now could avoid this fate.
Oil and gas-rich nations in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, have frequently tried to frustrate international climate change negotiations.
The Gulf, where populations are rising quickly, was hit this year by one of its worst-ever heatwaves, in which temperatures topped 50oC and led to a significant number of deaths.
“We would hope that information like this would be helpful in making sure there is interest [in cutting carbon emissions] for the countries in the region. They have a vital interest in supporting measures that would help reduce the concentration of [carbon dioxide] in the future,” Eltahir said.
The research examined how a combined measure of temperature and humidity, called wet-bulb temperature (WBT), would increase if carbon emissions continue on current trends and the world warms by 4oC this century.
At WBTs above 35oC, the high heat and humidity make it physically impossible for even the fittest human body to cool itself by sweating, with fatal consequences after six hours.
For less fit people, the fatal WBT is below 35oC. A WBT temperature of 35oC — the combination of 46oC heat and 50 percent humidity — was almost reached in Bandar Mahshahr in Iran in July.
The scientists used standard climate computer models to show that the fatal WBT extremes would occur every decade or two after 2070 along most of the Gulf coast, if global warming is not curbed.
Using the normal measure of temperature, the study shows 45oC would become the usual summer maximum in Gulf cities, with 60oC being seen in places like Kuwait City in some years.
Near the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, where Mecca and Jeddah lie, WBT is not projected to pass the fatal 35oC level, but would be 32oC or 33oC. This would make the hajj extremely hazardous, the scientists said.
“One of the rituals of hajj — the day of Arafah — involves worshiping at the site outside Mecca from sunrise to sunset. In these kind of conditions, it would be very hard to have outside rituals,” Eltahir said.
Air conditioning might be able to protect people indoors and those in wealthy Gulf oil states might be able to afford it, but less wealthy nations would suffer, the scientists said. In Yemen, for example, the WBT would reach 33oC.
“Under such conditions, climate change would possibly lead to premature death of the weakest — namely children and the elderly,” they said.
However, global action to cut carbon emissions would mean the fatal WBT would not be passed and that temperatures in Saudi Arabia would experience much smaller rises.
“The [Gulf] countries stand to gain considerable benefits by supporting the global efforts” to cut emissions, they said.
“The consequences of major heatwaves for human health has become apparent from the death toll of recent events such as those in Chicago in 1995, Europe in 2003 [30,000 deaths] and Russia in 2010 [50,000 deaths],” said climate scientist Christoph Schar at the ETH Zurich university in Switzerland, who was not involved in the study.
However, he said the study “concerns another category of heat waves — one that might be fatal to everybody affected, even young and fit individuals under shaded and well-ventilated outdoor conditions.”
Schar said the work showed the threat to human health from climate change might be much more severe and occur much earlier than previously thought.
“It also indicates that reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation efforts are essential for the inhabitants of the Gulf and Red Sea regions,” he said.
The Gulf is vulnerable to very high WBT because regional weather patterns mean it has clear summer skies, allowing the sun to strongly warm the waters of the Gulf, which are shallow and therefore heat up more than deeper oceans, the study said. This heating of the sea also produces high humidity, meaning cities near the coast are most affected.
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