The harsh summers await humanity

Cities like Shanghai (China), Seoul (South Korea) have just experienced terrible heat waves. Climate change will make this summer the most special in the next decade.

Northeast Asia is like a fire pan. Temperatures in Shanghai sometimes reach 40.8 degrees Celsius, the hottest in the city since Chinese officials began recording temperatures 140 years ago (since the Qing Dynasty).

On August 12, the temperature reached 41 degrees Celsius in Shimanto City, southern Japan - the highest temperature ever recorded in this country.

Hundreds of people across Korea are hospitalized because of heatstroke, even the government is forced to shut down the air-conditioning system in buildings due to fears of power shortage.

Continued hot sunshine represents the harshness of the weather, as happened in Europe 10 years ago that killed more than 30,000 people.

Some cities in Northeast Asia have experienced severe heat this summer

The future ahead has many risks associated with high temperatures. We know that the temperature will generally increase as the greenhouse gas effect increases. However, a new study published in Environmental Research Letters shows that the past types of scorching weather affecting Northeast Asia will occur more frequently in the coming decades. It will happen no matter what we do about carbon emissions in the near future. So we will have to go through extremely unpleasant summers.

The study was carried out by scientists at Potsdam Impact Research Institute (PIK) in Germany together with Complutense University in Badrid, Spain. They used climate models to predict how extreme heat would change in the next century. Scientists found that extreme heat waves were like the heat wave in the US in 2012, when the country had the warmest year ever recorded. Predicting such a heat wave will increase the impact to double the area of ​​the world by 2020 and quadruple by 2040. The worst heat waves will come from almost no place today until the covering about 3% of the world by 2040.

Researchers predict that heatwaves will increase in frequency and intensify until 2040 even when the international community tries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (the carbon emissions we just had adding to the atmosphere has created a certain heat despite the future climate policy.

However, under low emissions scenarios, the frequency of these unpleasant heat waves will stabilize in the second half of the century when the weather can start to regulate itself. But if emissions continue to increase, heat waves will intensify and occur in most parts of the world.

Professor Ronald L.Sas of Rice University (USA) said: 'The weather has changed since the 50s, but changed very slowly. In 1980 or 1990, we began to see an accelerating impact of climate change. This impact continues to accelerate, so climate change will become faster and faster. I think, by 2100, we will see the average Earth's temperature rise 5 to 8 degrees Celsius. '

Places like Northeast Asia will suffer the worst that they have begun to experience. Imagine heat waves with temperatures above 46.1 degrees Celsius or 48.9 degrees Celsius in cities like Shanghai and Seoul. Even tropical cities like Mumbai or Jakarta will become hotter than humans have ever experienced.

Maybe we are optimistic that we will find a way to adapt to high temperatures. Thanks to the widespread use of air conditioners, cities have a hot climate even before global warming, such as in Phoenix or Singapore, can still grow. However, there is a limit, especially when you consider the impact of hot climates on crops.

PIK scientist Dim Coumou said: In many areas, the coolest summer months at the end of this century will be hotter than the hottest months we have today. Those are the calculations we have for the future of climate change. We will enter a new weather mode.