In a recent NASA study, scientists warn that if global temperatures continue to rise and are 2 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times, people around the world can simultaneously face many effects. of climate change.
Research indicates that more than a quarter of the world's population may experience an extra month of heat stress each year compared with the mid-20th century.
The study also predicts that high temperatures and drought could combine dangerously in places like the Amazon, increasing the risk of wildfires. In the Western United States, fire-related extreme weather can be more intense and last longer.
To conduct this study, the scientists used a set of climate predictions generated by 35 of the world's leading climate models, including those developed by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Research. develop. The models are part of the Combined Inter-Model Comparison Project (CMIP), which provides climate projections to help international and national climate teams understand historical climate change, now and future.
"We wanted to investigate how these aspects of the environment are expected to change and what their combined effects might mean," said Taejin Park, first author of the paper. to people around the world”.
In particular, they look at heat stress - or the combined effects of heat and humidity on the human body - and fire weather - taking into account temperature, precipitation, humidity, and wind.
Then, NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) researchers used advanced statistical techniques to "reduce" these predictions, greatly improving their resolution. NEX uses supercomputers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley to analyze large amounts of data collected by aircraft and satellites, or in this case, predictions made by models. climate created. The team analyzed scaled-down forecasts to assess expected changes to six key climate variables, including air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, shortwave solar radiation, and shortwave solar radiation. length and wind speed. They found that most parts of the world would experience higher heat stress, while countries closer to the equator would experience more days considered extreme.
“The escalating impact of all the climate extremes studied could cause significant damage to communities,” said Ramakrishna Nemani, senior scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI). economy, through fires, floods, landslides, and possible crop failures”. and co-author of the study.
The results highlight the urgent need for global action to mitigate the dangerous effects of climate change.
