People already living in extreme heat give glimpse of climate future

On a treeless street in the scorching sun, welder Abbas Abdul Karim works on a metal bench.

Those who live in Basra, Iraq, expect the intense heat, but for Karim, it’s relentless. He has to work during the day to see the iron he skilfully fashions into stair railings or welds into doorframes. The heat is so strenuous that he can’t get used to it. “I feel my eyes burning.”

Working outdoors in Iraq’s scorching summer temperatures isn’t just strenuous. It can cause long-term damage to the body. We know Karim’s risk because we measure the temperature: by late morning, the air around Karim has reached a heat index of 52°C. This creates a high risk of heatstroke—especially with your heavy clothes and direct sun. Thermal imaging shows additional heat coming out of your equipment, making your workspace even more dangerous.

The body’s struggle to sweat and cool itself can cause dehydration and put extra strain on the kidneys. Over time, this increases the risk of kidney stones and disease. The heart also works harder, trying to pump more blood to the skin and release body heat.

As Karim worked, our monitor found that his pulse rate was rising, indicating to experts that his body temperature had risen by about 1°C, which puts dangerously high stress on the heart. The blood supply to his brain was probably reduced for about an hour as blood flow was needed elsewhere. He felt dizzy and had to stop. “It feels like the heat is going out of my head,” he commented.

What Karim was experiencing wasn’t a hot flash. It was just an average August day in Basra, the pioneer city of climate change — and a glimpse of the future for much of the planet, as human emissions distort the climate.

By 2050, almost half of the world could be living in areas that experience dangerous levels of heat for at least a month, including Miami; Lagos, Nigeria; and Shanghai, according to projections by researchers at Harvard University, in Massachusetts, and the University of Washington.

As we monitored people’s daily activities in Basra and Kuwait City, we documented their exposure to the heat and how it had transformed their lives. What we saw exposed the tremendous gap between those who have the means to protect themselves and those who don’t. We also saw an even more unsettling reality: no one can completely escape the debilitating heat.

The heat made Kadhim Fadhil Enad wake up. His family air conditioner had stopped and he found himself sweating in the dark. High temperatures would rule the rest of your day. For him and many others in Basra, the rising heat has altered workdays and sleep schedules.

When Enad, 25, and his brother, Rahda, left for work shortly after 4am, it felt 46C outside. Both work in construction. In the sweltering summers of southern Iraq, that means rushing to get as far ahead as possible before the sun comes out and the most severe heat of the day sets in. Even if they can adapt their schedule, as Enad did, and start work in the middle of the night, it’s already so hot that exhaustion trumps the workday, reducing productivity and eroding earnings.

Extreme heat is altering life around the world, including Pakistan, India, Tunisia, Mexico, central China and elsewhere. And the more temperatures rise, the greater the number of workers affected. Globally, the effects of extreme heat already add up to hundreds of billions of dollars in lost work each year.

It was 5:30 am in Kuwait City when Abdullah Husain, 36, left his apartment to walk his dogs. The sun had barely risen, but the day was already sweltering. He said that in the summer he needs to take the dogs out early, before the asphalt gets so hot it burns their paws. “Everything after sunrise is hell.” Assistant professor of environmental sciences at Kuwait University, Husain lives a very different life than Enad in Basra. But both men’s days are affected by the relentless heat.

Basra and Kuwait City are about 130 kilometers apart, and generally have the same climate, with summer temperatures topping 38°C for weeks on end. But in other ways, they’re worlds apart. Both places produce oil, but in Kuwait the commodity has generated great wealth and provided citizens with a high standard of living. This vast economic gap is evident in how people can protect themselves from the heat, a divide between rich and poor that is increasingly present around the world.

Husain commutes to work over wide highways in an air-conditioned car; Enad walks to work through streets littered with rapidly rotting garbage. Husain teaches at an air-conditioned university; even working nights, Enad cannot escape his warming world.

Kuwait’s tremendous oil wealth allows it to protect people from the heat — but these protections come at a cost, damaging the culture and way of life. When the heat arrives, people abandon parks and outdoor areas. Slides, swings and other playground equipment get so hot they can burn children’s legs. Most inhabitants avoid going out — which affects their health. Despite the abundance of sunshine, many Kuwaitis are deficient in vitamin D, which the body makes from sunlight. Many are also overweight.

By the end of the century, Basra, Kuwait City and many others are likely to have several dangerously hot days a year. The number of days will depend on what people do in the meantime.

According to the predictions of Harvard researchers, even if humans significantly reduce carbon emissions, by the year 2100, Kuwait City and Basra will experience months of heat and humidity hotter than 39°C, much longer than in the last decade. Estimates for the future are inaccurate, but scientists agree that the situation will get worse — and could be catastrophic if emissions are not reduced. In this scenario, Miami, for example, could experience dangerous heat for almost half of the year.

Husain, the professor, said most Kuwaitis don’t think about the link between burning fossil fuels and the heat: “People complain, but that doesn’t prompt action or behavior change. They take the opportunity to sunbathe or go to the gym. beach, but if it’s too hot, they stay at home in the air conditioning.”

And because emissions don’t respect borders, Kuwait City and Basra will continue to get hotter no matter what they do, unless big emitters like the United States and China change course.

Before Karim the welder was born in 1983, Basra was a greener and cooler city. The date palm groves softened the temperature, and the canals that irrigated its gardens earned it the nickname “the Venice of the East”.

Many of these towering trees were being cut down when Karim was a child, and very few remained when Enad, the construction worker, was growing up in the early 2000s. But even so, the city was still dotted with tamarisks, healthy bushes that erupted annually. with pink and white flowers. Now, most of them are gone too. Without them, Basra has turned into a city of concrete and asphalt, absorbing and radiating heat long after sunset.

In the future, many people around the world will migrate to escape the heat. But there are likely to be many others who, like Karim and Enad, will not have the resources to move towards a greener country. And wealthier nations that already strangle their borders are likely to make immigration even more difficult as climate pressures mount.

Karim and Enad dream of moving. Karim wants a “greener” place; Enad, a “cooler”. Enad hopes to marry and have children, and raise them somewhere that has “room for nature”: “The houses will be made of wood and there will be a forest.”