Efforts initiated a decade ago under the Paris climate agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have made a substantial impact.
According to a recent study, without these efforts, our planet would be on track to experience an extra 114 days of dangerously high temperatures each year.
Research from various groups, including peer-reviewed studies, also links hundreds of thousands of deaths to recent heatwaves, largely attributed to human-induced climate change, according to Kristie Ebi, a public health and climate scientist at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the latest report.
The data highlights the stark inequality in the impacts of climate change, even when considering the less severe of two projected scenarios. Researchers detailed how many additional extremely hot days each country might face by the century’s end under these conditions.
Country data shows high heat inequality
The countries facing the most significant increases in extreme heat days are predominantly small, ocean-dependent nations like the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Panama, and Indonesia. For instance, Panama is projected to experience an additional 149 scorching days.
Collectively, these top 10 nations contribute merely 1% of the global greenhouse gas emissions yet are anticipated to endure nearly 13% of the additional extreme heat days.
But top carbon polluting countries, the United States, China and India are predicted to get only between 23 and 30 extra superhot days. They are responsible for 42 per cent of the carbon dioxide in the air, but are getting less than 1 per cent of the additional superhot days.
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“This report beautifully and tangibly quantifies what we’ve been saying for decades. The impacts of global warming are going to disproportionally affect developing nations that historically haven’t emitted significant quantities of greenhouse gases,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who wasn’t part of the study team.
“Global warming is driving yet another wedge between have and have not nations; this will ultimately sow seeds of further geopolitical instability.”
Hawaii and Florida are the US states that will see the biggest increase in superhot days by the end of the century under the current carbon pollution trajectory, while Idaho will see the smallest jump, the report found.
While the report makes sense, Potsdam Climate Institute Director Johan Rockstrom, who wasn’t part of the research, said people shouldn’t be relieved that we are no longer on the 4C warming pre-Paris trajectory because the current track “would still imply a disastrous future for billions of humans on Earth.”
