Abstract
South Asia (SA) is one of those hotspots where earliest exposure to deadly wet-bulb temperatures (Tw >35°C) is projected in warmer future climates. Here we find that even today parts of SA experience the upper limits of labor productivity (Tw >32°C) or human survivability (Tw >35°C), indicating that previous estimates for future exposure to Tw-based extremes may be conservative. Our results show that at 2°C global warming above pre-industrial levels, the per person exposure approximately increases by 2.2 (2.7) folds for unsafe labor (lethal) threshold compared to the 2006–2015 reference period. Limiting warming to 1.5°C would avoid about half that impact. The population growth under the middle-of-the-road socioeconomic pathway could further increase these exposures by a factor of ∼2 by the mid-century. These results indicate an imminent need for adaptation measures, while highlighting the importance of stringent Paris-compatible mitigation actions for limiting future emergence of such conditions in SA.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e2020GL091191 |
Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
Volume | 48 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2021 |
Funding
We thank the HAPPI initiative and all participating modeling groups that have provided data. F. Saeed and C. F. Schleussner acknowledge support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01LS1613A) and by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (16_II_148_Global_A_IMPACT). M. Ashfaq was supported by the National Climate‐Computing Research Center, which is located within the National Center for Computational Sciences at the ORNL and supported under a Strategic Partnership Project, 2316‐T849‐08, between DOE and NOAA. We thank the HAPPI initiative and all participating modeling groups that have provided data. F. Saeed and C. F. Schleussner acknowledge support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01LS1613A) and by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (16_II_148_Global_A_IMPACT). M. Ashfaq was supported by the National Climate-Computing Research Center, which is located within the National Center for Computational Sciences at the ORNL and supported under a Strategic Partnership Project, 2316-T849-08, between DOE and NOAA. The data are accessible from the repository through the following link https://redmine.dkrz.de/projects/happi-de/wiki/How_to_get_data_from_HAPPI_data_portal . The population data are available at https://www.isimip.org/gettingstarted/input-data-biascorrection/details/62/ . This manuscript has been co‐authored by employees of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT Battelle, LLC, under contract DE‐AC05‐00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non‐exclusive, paid‐up, irrevocable, world‐wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).
Keywords
- Paris Agreement
- South Asia
- heat stress