India, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and central America face extreme risk. People are likely to have been dying of heat stress in high numbers already, but their cause of death has not been registered. In large parts of Africa there is almost no monitoring of extreme heat events. At other stations, on the shores of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of California and the western side of south Asia, measurements have come close. The figures do not take into account the effect of rising sea levels, which could displace hundreds of millions more.Īlready, weather stations in the Persian Gulf have recorded wetbulb measurements – a combination of heat and humidity – beyond the point (35C at 100% humidity) at which most human beings can survive.
These conditions include extreme disruption, morbidity and death through heat-shock, water stress, crop failure and the spread of infectious disease. In this case, by the end of the century around 5.3 billion people would face conditions that ranged from dangerous to impossible. But if they abandon their climate policies, this would lead to around 4.4C of heating. If governments limited heating to their agreed goal of 1.5C, the numbers exposed to extreme heat would be reduced fivefold. On this trajectory, some 2 billion people may be left outside the niche by 2030, and 3.7 billion by 2090. Current global policies are likely to result in about 2.7C of heating by 2100. Already, around 600 million people have been stranded in inhospitable conditions by global heating. We have clustered in the parts of the world with a climate that supports our flourishing, but in many of these places the niche is shrinking. If we don’t break this cycle soon, it will become the dominant story of our times.Ī recent paper in the scientific journal Nature identifies the “human climate niche”: the range of temperatures and rainfall within which human societies thrive. As the extreme right gains power, climate programmes are shut down, heating accelerates and more people are driven from their homes. As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach.
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