The rise in sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, known as El Niño, is often mistakenly linked to summer heat in Europe.
The Persian Gulf will become a ghost town by the end of the century
Alla fine del secolo le temperature dell’area del Golfo Persico potrebbero essere insopportabili per gli esseri umani.
Dubai, lively emirate rose between the desert and the Persian Gulf, could become a ghost city by the end of the century. Due to climate change, temperatures in the gulf area could exceed 70°C by 2100, becoming unbearable to human body.
The alarming forecast has emerged from a new study carried out by Jeremy Pal of the Loyola Marymount University, and Elfatih Eltahir of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and published on Nature Climate Change.
The researchers, through sophisticated climate simulations of the area, managed to obtain information about temperatures by the end of the century, between 2071 and 2100. They thereafter assessed climate variations related to greenhouse gas concentrations, by using two projections by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change): one forecasts the rising temperatures to continue at current levels, whilst the other considers a reduction in emissions.
According to the first scenario, climate will be warmer, occasionally exceeding the threshold of human survivability in the major cities of the region. On the other hand, according to the second scenario, decreasing CO2 emissions will avoid critical increase in temperatures.
This implies an inevitable concern about public health: elderly and sick people will be the first ones to be affected, but also healthy people will be jeopardised after many hours of exposition.
“Such severe heat waves are expected to occur only once every decade or every few decades,” said study author Elfatih Eltahir. “But when they happen they will be quite lethal.”
This phenomenon could also threaten the region’s economy, mainly affecting the oil industry, the major economic resource of the Arab Emirates.
Ironically, fossil fuels and emissions they cause could doom many cities of the Persian Gulf to disappear, unless effective global strategies are implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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