Climate change: Extreme heat is a ‘silent killer’ – prepare for heat waves

Whole areas of the Earth will no longer be habitable in the coming decades due to more frequent and intense heat waves due to climate change, the UN and the Red Cross warned today.

Less than a month before the start of COP27, which will be held in November in Egypt, the UN and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) reminded in their joint report that the world should prepare for the coming heat waves , in order to avoid the large number of dead.

The organizations emphasized that there are limits beyond which those exposed to extreme heat and humidity cannot survive and that there are limits beyond which societies can no longer adapt.

“Based on the current track, heat waves may reach and exceed physical and social limits over the coming decades, especially in regions such as the Sahel, south Asia and southwest Asia,” they noted.

This situation will mean “suffering and loss of human life on a large scale, displacement of populations and worsening inequalities”, the organizations warned.

According to their joint report, almost everywhere where reliable statistics are available, heat waves are the deadliest meteorological hazard.

They already kill thousands of people every year and will become even more deadly as climate change intensifies, Martin Griffiths, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), and Jagan Chapagain, IFRC’s secretary-general, note in the report.

Heat waves are responsible for some of the deadliest disasters on record. The report recalls the heavy toll of the 2003 heatwave in Europe, which killed more than 70,000 people, and the heat wave in Russia in 2010 that claimed more than 55,000 lives.

Experts predict particularly high death rates due to extreme heat “which by the end of the century can be compared to all cancers”.

“silent killer”

This year entire regions or countries in North Africa, Australia, Europe, southern Asia and the Middle East were suffocated by record high temperatures, as was China and the western US.

The report recalls that extreme heat is a “silent killer”, the effects of which will spread, raising enormous challenges to sustainable development, while also creating new humanitarian needs.

The two organizations call for immediate investment to mitigate the effects of climate change and support the long-term adaptation of the most vulnerable populations.

According to research cited in the report, the number of poor people living in extreme heat in urban areas will increase by 700% by 2050. The biggest increases will be seen in west Africa and south-east Asia.

But the UN and the Red Cross stress that it is also important for the international community to recognize that adaptation to extreme heat has limits.

If emissions of the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change are not reduced “aggressively”, the world will face “unimagined levels of extreme heat”, they warn.

RES-EMP

Read the News today and get the latest news.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news.