A study shows that almost a billion people of the world will be compelled to tolerate excessive temperature within 5 decades because of rising additional 1 C temperature every year.
in the worst-case scenario of increasing pollution, places that currently cover one-third of the world's population would be as warm as the hottest areas of the Sahara in 50 years, the report warns. Even, about 1.2 billion people of the world would fall beyond the "climate niche" in which humans have lived for at least 6,000 years. The authors of the paper state that the results were "floored" and "blown away" because they did not foresee that our species is so vulnerable, The Guardian reports. "The figures are grim. "Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter, said, "I checked it two times when I first saw them. I have even evolved climatic strategies which were once seen as destructive. Yet it struck home harder".
Instead of considering climate change as a physical or economic issue, the paper published in the proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences tests the impact of it on the human environment. The entire human race has always existed in regions with an average annual temperature of approximately 6 C (43 F) to 28 C (82 F), which is optimal for human health and food production. But as a result of human-made global warming, this sweet spot is shifting and shrinking which pushes more people to what the authors call "nearly inhabitable" poles.
Humanity is more vulnerable because it concentrates on land – warming faster than oceans and because the bulk of potential overpopulation will be achieved already in warm regions of Africa and Asia. As a consequence of these demographic issues, the average human will face a temperature growth of 7.5 C as the global temperatures reach 3 C at the end of the century, as this is predicted.
At this point, about 30 percent of the population of the world will live in extreme heat – averaged 29 C (84 F) temperature. The conditions in the Sahara are extremely rare outside its area, but, with global 3 C heating, it is estimated that 1.2 billion people living in India, 485 million in Nigeria, and over 100 million in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Sudan can be affected by this.
This will throw challenges to the habitats and the food production methods that may lead to the migration process. ''I think it is prudent to say that normally, the heat level over 29 C is insufferable. You should migrate or adjust. Yet adjustment is limited. You can use air conditioning and fly in food if you have enough money and resources and then maybe you'll be all right. But that is not the case for most of the population," states one of the leading authors of the research, Professor Marten Scheffer of the university of Wageningen. He had previously researched rainforest and Savanna's climate distribution and wondered what would be the result of applying the same approach to humans. ''We acknowledge that habitats of most creatures are constrained by temperature. For example, Penguins can adapt only to cold water, and corals can be found only in hot water. However, we didn't expect people to be so sensitive. It is because we use clothing, heating, and air conditioning that make ourselves adaptive. But, in truth, in a climate niche in which the vast majority of humans live and have always lived, that is changing now like never before." We were awestruck by the scale," he said.
The experts claimed that the results of their research would enable officials to speed up the emission control and work together to deal with migration as any future reduction of temperature will prevent a billion people to tumble off the atmospheric sphere of the human race. There will also be more transition in the next 50 years than in the last 6000 years.
Another writer of the study, Xu Chi of Nanjing University said, "We need a global strategy to defend our children against potentially enormous social conflicts which this predicted change might evoke".
