The Arabian Gulf and parts of Iran will suffer heatwaves beyond the limit of human survival if climate change is unchecked, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The study found that the extreme heatwaves will kick in after 2070 and that the hottest days of today would by then be a near-daily occurrence. These heatwaves will affect Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and coastal cities in Iran and will pose a deadly threat to millions of pilgrims in Saudi Arabia when the haj falls in summer.
“Our results expose a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in the absence of significant [carbon cuts], is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future,” said Professors Jeremy Pal and Elfatih Eltahir of MIT, writing in the journal, Nature Climate Change.
They said the future climate for many locations in the Gulf would be like today’s extreme climate in the desert of Northern Afar, on the African side of the Red Sea, where there are no permanent human settlements at all. But the study also showed that cutting greenhouse gas emissions now could avoid this fate.
The Gulf, where populations are rising quickly, was hit this year by one of its worst-ever heatwaves, with temperatures topping 50C, leading to many deaths.
Using the normal measure of temperature, the study shows that 45°C will become the usual summer maximum in Gulf cities, with 60°C being seen in places like Kuwait City in some years.
“The [Gulf] countries stand to gain considerable benefits by supporting the global efforts to cut emissions,” said the scientists.
In response, Mr Abdullah Al Mandoos, Executive Director of the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS), said other studies have suggested that cities in the Gulf will not be so alarmingly hot. For example, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), temperatures will increase by between 0.3-4.8° Celsius by 2100 as a worst-case scenario.
He told Gulf News that all weather research in the world comes with uncertainty, as it is all based on future predictions and should be interpreted with caution.
The IPCC reports, he said, are an accredited and trusted reference used by the UN in climate change issues.