How heat waves will affect 3billion people by 2027 – Study

A study conducted by an international team of archaeologists, climate scientists and ecologists has revealed that billions of people aroubd the world could live in areas too hot for humans by 2070.

According to the report published in the ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’,  if the planet continues to warm at current levels over the next 50 years, about  3 billion people could be living in areas that are too hot for humans.

They said that if heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current pace, by 2070 billions of people will be living in conditions hotter than those that have allowed life to thrive for the past 6,000 years.

For every 1°C (1.8°F) of warming, 1 billion people will either have to migrate to cooler regions or adapt to extreme heat conditions, the study found.

Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at the University of Washington and co-author of the study said that these findings can be viewed as a worst case or “business-as-usual” scenario of “what could happen if we don’t change our ways.”

This is what climate change looks like an iceberg floats in a fjord near the town of Tasiilaq, Greenland, in June 2018. 

Greenland is often considered by scientists to be ground zero of the Earth’s climate change. 

The massive island is mostly in the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. 

Most of the world’s population live in areas with a mean annual temperature of between 11 and 15 degrees Celsius (51.8 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit). 

A smaller band of between 20 to 25 °C (68 to 77°F) encompasses areas in South Asia that are affected by the Indian monsoon the annual rains that irrigates large swathes of cropland vital for food production.

Surprisingly, the scientists said, humans have favored living in these conditions for the past 6,000 years — that’s despite recent technological advances such as air conditioning that have allowed us to push this boundary.