Persian Gulf May Soon Be Too Hot For Human Life, Climate Simulation Shows

An Asian labourer avoids the direct sun by using the shade of a wooden sign as he works on a manhole beside a road under construction in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photo: AP

Now a notoriously oil-rich region, the Persian Gulf might become uninhabitable by the next century under the current global warming trends. It is thought that they will create humid heat conditions at a level incompatible with human existence, a new study reveals.

According to research published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the heat generated by greenhouse gas emissions would create conditions in the Gulf where a healthy person would not be unable to maintain a normal body temperature.

“Our results expose a specific regional hot spot where climate change, in the absence of significant [carbon cuts], is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future,” said Jeremy Pal and Elfatih Eltahir of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

RT report continues:

The scientists used climate computer models to come up with the extreme future weather scenarios, which based on current global warming trends, predict summer temperatures of up to 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) in Kuwait City.

Kuwait city. © Jamal Saidi / Reuters

Such temperatures, researchers warn could “become hazardous to human health," especially for the elderly, as the human body would be incapable of maintaining body temperature.

Research explains that human body could adapt to extreme “dry-bulb” heat through sweating but would struggle if the “wet-bulb” temperature, a combination of heat and humidity, breaches the threshold of +35 degrees Celsius.

Once high heat and humidity reaches a certain level, “the body is no longer able to cool itself and begins to overheat,” Pal told journalists. Out in the open and without air conditioning, a person could only stay out in the sun for six hours, at most, before their body began shut down.

Researchers believe that the Gulf’s geographical position will result in such unlivable moist-but-hot conditions. Authors said that under these circumstances, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca would become life-threatening and almost impossible to undertake by the year 2100. Industrial activities such as construction would also become hazardous to humans, the authors said.

Forecast For Persian Gulf: A Heat Too Hot For Human Body

Muslim pilgrims at the annual Haj in Saudi Arabia, where temperatures may one day be too hot for humans. Photo: AP

Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Washington: If carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current pace, by the end of century parts of the Persian Gulf will sometimes be just too hot for the human body to tolerate, a new study says.

How hot? The heat index – which combines heat and humidity – may hit 74 to 77 degrees Celsius for at least six hours, according to numerous computer simulations in the new study. That's so hot that the human body can't get rid of heat. The elderly and ill are hurt most by current heatwaves, but the future is expected to be so hot that healthy, fit people would be endangered, health experts say.

"You can go to a wet sauna and put the temperature up to 35 [degrees Celsius] or so. You can bear it for a while, now think of that at an extended exposure" of six or more hours, study co-author Elfatih Eltahir, an MIT environmental engineering professor, said.

While humans have been around, earth has not seen that type of prolonged, oppressive combination of heat and humidity, Professor Eltahir said. But with the unique geography and climate of the Persian Gulf and increased warming projected if heat-trapping gas emissions continue to rise at current rates, it will happen every decade or so by the end of the century, according to the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

This would be the type of heat that would make the deadly heatwave in Europe in 2003 that killed more than 70,000 people "look like a refreshing day or event", study co-author Jeremy Pal, of Loyola Marymount University, said.

It would still be rare, and cities such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha wouldn't quite be uninhabitable, thanks to airconditioning. But for people living and working outside or those with no airconditioning, it would be intolerable, Professor Eltahir and Dr Pal said. While Mecca won't be quite as hot, the heat will likely still cause many deaths during the annual Haj pilgrimage, Professor Eltahir said.

"Some of the scariest prospects from a changing climate involve conditions completely outside the range of human experience," Carnegie Institution for Science climate researcher Chris Field, who wasn't part of the study, wrote in an email. "If we don't limit climate change to avoid extreme heat or mugginess, the people in these regions will likely need to find other places to live."

Howard Frumkin, dean of the University of Washington school of public health, who wasn't part of the research, said: "When the ambient temperatures are extremely high, as projected in this paper, then exposed people can and do die. The implications of this paper for the Gulf region are frightening."

But if the world limits future heat-trapping gas emissions – even close to the amount pledged recently by countries around the world before climate talks this year in Paris – that intolerable level of heat can be avoided, Professor Eltahir said.

AP