{"id":68521,"date":"2017-08-03T14:05:45","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T21:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=68521"},"modified":"2017-08-03T14:05:45","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T21:05:45","slug":"climate-change-could-bring-killer-humid-heatwaves-to-south-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/08\/03\/climate-change-could-bring-killer-humid-heatwaves-to-south-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change Could Bring Killer Humid Heatwaves to South Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"download__headline\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>technologyreview.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<div class=\"download__dek download__dek--full\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<p>A new study suggests that if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, global warming could cause catastrophic heat waves across parts of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The analysis makes estimates of wet bulb\u201d temperature\u2014a measure of heat and humidity, which when above \u00a035\u00b0C becomes potentially fatal for healthy humans exposed to it for longer than six hours.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/advances.sciencemag.org\/content\/3\/8\/e1603322\">Writing in\u00a0<em>Science Advances<\/em><\/a>, the researchers describe projections of that measure across the south Asia subcontinent based on two of the planet\u2019s less desirable future greenhouse gas levels, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change classifies as intermediate\u201d and \u00a0high\u201d scenarios. In the first case, huge areas of south Asia would regularly experience wet bulb temperatures above 31\u00b0C. In the second, many large regions\u2014including India\u2019s Ganges river valley, Pakistan\u2019s Indus valley, and northern Sri Lanka\u2014would experience wet bulb temperatures close to or exceeding 35\u00b0C.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-68522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/south.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"760\" height=\"426\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/south.jpg 760w, https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/south-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px\" \/><br \/>\nWhat\u2019s perhaps most troubling about the finding is that these regions are home to incredibly poor and vulnerable communities, which\u00a0often make their living off of the land. That, of course, isn\u2019t a new story: we recently reported that heat waves brought about climate change have already\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/s\/608089\/climate-change-has-made-heat-waves-much-more-deadly-mainly-for-the-poor\/\">hit poor people the hardest<\/a>, and we know that climate change will continue to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/s\/603158\/hotter-days-will-drive-global-inequality\/\">drive global inequality<\/a>\u00a0in the future if it goes unchecked. But that doesn\u2019t make it any less sad. As Chris Huntingford from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2017\/aug\/02\/climate-change-to-cause-humid-heatwaves-that-will-kill-even-healthy-people\">said to the<em>\u00a0Guardian<\/em><\/a>: If given just one word to describe climate change, then \u2018unfairness\u2019 would be a good candidate. Raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are expected to cause deadly heatwaves for much of South Asia. Yet many of those living there will have contributed little to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>technologyreview.com A new study suggests that if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, global warming could cause catastrophic heat waves across parts of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The analysis makes estimates of wet bulb\u201d temperature\u2014a measure of heat and humidity, which when above \u00a035\u00b0C becomes potentially fatal for healthy humans exposed to it for longer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}