How hot will summers be in your city by 2100? Summer highs in Lahore could be more like Doha, Qatar, and Karachi could be more like Jeddah, Saudi Arabia — by 2100 without emissions cuts.
SoDATA (South Data) — Summers around the world are going to get dramatically hotter by century’s end if carbon pollution continues to rise. That problem will be felt most acutely in cities which include Karachi, Lahore to name two in our country.
The world’s rapidly growing population coupled with the urban heat island effect — which can make cities up to 14°F (7.8°C) warmer than their leafy, rural counterparts — add up to a recipe for dangerous and potentially deadly heat.
As an example, summer highs in Karachi could be more like Jeddah in Saudi Arabia by 2100 without emissions cuts. As for Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, it could be more like Karachi by 2100 without emissions cuts. While, Jeddah, could be more like Baghdad, Iraq, by 2100 without emissions cuts. Riyadh’s summer highs would be around 48 degree — currently there is no place on Earth that is as hot as summers could be in the Saudi capital by 2100 without emissions cuts.
For your city, use the interactive graph below (2017 data):
Shifting Cities
How Hot Will Summers Be By 2100?
Search or click on a city to find out
And what about Male, Maldives — the country said to be on the crosshairs of climate change and sea-levels change of the worst kind. It could be more like Bangalore (Bangalaru) by 2100 without emissions cuts. And its per capita tourism revenue of more than US$6000 see a dip — the cluster of islands has a small population of 400,000 with one of the longest shoreline affected by rising sea levels.
The rise of urban population is another factor. Currently, about 54 percent of the world’s population live in cities, and by 2050 the urban population is expected to grow by nearly 3 billion people at the rate of 75m every year —
almost two-thirds will be living and working in the urban areas according to forecasts. As those cities get hotter, weather patterns may shift and make extreme heat even more common — pollution notwithstanding. Add air pollution to the equation, and things could become grimmer.
That will in turn threaten public health and the economy — unless preventive and mitigation steps are taken now in a sustainable manner.
Up to a dozen cities will heat up so much, their summers will have no analog currently on Earth. For instance, Khartoum, Sudan’s average summer temperature is projected to skyrocket to 111.4°F (44.1°C) if carbon pollution continues unchecked. That shift underscores that unless carbon pollution is curbed, the planet could be headed toward a state humans have never experienced.
The article (by Irshad Salim) was first published in July 2017
