The Hot Reality: Living in a +50°C World

Nitin Bassi and Bhuvan Ravindran
July 2024 | Sustainable Water

Suggested Citation: Fox, Tim, Toby Peters and Leyla Sayin. 2024. The Hot Reality: Living in a +50°C World, (Ed.). Gurubalan Annadurai, Nitin Bassi, Brian Churchyard, Dim Coumou, John Dora, Eliad Eid, Judith Evans, et al. UK: University of Birmingham.

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003281818.

Overview

The report examines the impact of rising temperatures and more frequent heat waves on humans, mortality, physical health, mental well-being, food and nutritional security, and the buildings and places. It calls for a radical shift in policy to create more ambitious strategies for delivering cooling and effectively managing energy use and achieving reductions in cooling demand. The report features contributions from more than 35 subject matter experts around the globe.

Key Highlights

• Food supply will be impacted by shifting growing seasons, water stress, and decreasing crop yields. The overall production will decrease by up to 30 per cent by 2050 per 1°C rise above seasonal mean temperatures.
• Society’s ability to address the emergence, re-emergence and shifting geographical spread of infectious diseases will be affected in a warmer world, where the distribution of disease vectors will alter and operation of refrigeration equipment will be impacted. Already, 25 per cent of vaccine doses are currently wasted globally each year (at an annual cost estimated to be USD 34.1 billion), due to shortcomings within refrigerated distribution.
• Other health infrastructure such as hospitals, health centres, and care homes will experience an increase in unplanned emergency admissions due to normally healthy people seeking treatment for heat related issues.
• Productivity and economic output will be impacted due to heat stress for occupants of the industrial, commercial and other workplace buildings which are largely not designed to cope with high temperatures. For instances, establishments with mechanical cooling equipment installed, at 40°C the capacity and efficiency of such systems typically decreases by 30 per cent or more.
• Economic losses due to heat stress at work are estimated to be around US$2.4 trillion per year by 2030, disproportionately affecting lower-middle and low-income workers, and the associated productivity loss would be the equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs.

Key Recommendations

• Take a ‘whole systems view’ to ensure the successful use of cooling as an adaptation strategy, particularly in the context of transitioning to the widespread use of renewable energy.
• ‘Think thermally’, an approach which focuses on the efficient and effective integration of socio-economic cooling needs with available natural, waste, and renewable energy resources.
• Ensure systems that provide cooling solutions, such as passive and nature-based solutions, are themselves well adapted and resilient to higher seasonal temperatures, future heat waves, water variability, and other changes to the climates in which they operate.
• Treat cooling infrastructure as a ‘Critical National Infrastructure’ given that they are vital to the food and nutritional security, health, thermal comfort, productivity, prosperity, and economic well-being of most nations.
• Fund national programmes to train people in design, operate, and maintain advanced and sustainable cooling technologies.