(Six minute read)
There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about future climate projections, but we can at least be prepared in the event that the kinds of weather conditions we’ve already experienced occur again but in a warmer climate.
The difference now is the background because the planet will be hotter than it was when those events first struck, and that extra heat could turn a bad week into something closer to a mass casualty disaster.
Global temperatures in recent years have hovered close to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. That is about 0.7 degrees hotter than in 2003, when a ferocious heat wave killed more than 20,000 people across Europe.
In today’s climate, close to 1.5 degrees above pre industrial levels, that same pattern would kill an estimated 17,800 people in a single week.
If global temperatures reach 3 degrees above the pre industrial baseline, a repeat of the 2003 pattern would drive weekly excess deaths to about 32,000.
At 4 degrees, the toll could reach roughly 45,000 deaths in one week.
We are just so underprepared for these events.
Every extra half degree turns a bad week into something far worse for real people, including you and your family.
Even with strong adaptation, the only reliable way to avoid the most extreme death tolls is to limit how hot the background climate becomes.
There is no more time to be had before we start to see tipping points in the climate occurring.
Then you can rest assured that migration will see new conflicts breaking out that will kill just as many who die from the heat in the first place.
Will these deaths disturb us? Of course not we humans are use to dying in our thousands.
But slow death from heat is worse than drowning.
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