New Delhi: Over half the children born in 2020 could face an unprecedented exposure to heatwaves, compared to 16 per cent of those born in 1960, even if global warming were limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a new study has found.
Analysing demographic data and projections of climate extremes around the world, researchers calculated the fraction of each generation born between 1960 and 2020, who could face an unprecedented exposure in their lifetime.
The younger a person, the higher their chances of experiencing unprecedented climate extremes, including heatwaves, river floods and droughts — children in the tropics will bear the worst burden, the team said. Its findings were published in the journal ‘Nature’.
“In this new study, living an unprecedented life means that without climate change, one would have less than a 1-in-10,000 chance of experiencing that many climate extremes across one’s lifetime,” lead author Luke Grant, a climate scientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, said.
“This is a stringent threshold that identifies populations facing climate extremes far beyond what could be expected without man-made climate change,” Grant said.
The authors wrote, “Under a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway, 52 per cent of people born in 2020 will experience unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves.”
Further, under a scenario of 3.5 degrees Celsius warming, “over 90 per cent will endure such exposure throughout their lives,” Grant said.
“The same picture emerges for other climate extremes examined, though with slightly lower affected fractions of the population. Yet the same unfair generational differences in unprecedented exposure is observed,” the author said.
In a 2021 study, the team had found that children — especially in low-income countries — could see a disproportionate increase in exposure to extreme weather events.
“Now, we examined where the cumulative exposure to climate extremes across one’s lifetime will far exceed that which would have been experienced in a pre-industrial climate,” senior author Wim Thiery, professor of climate science at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, said.
The team’s findings also highlight the social injustice of climate change and its impacts.
Under current climate policies, almost all of the most socio-economically vulnerable children born in 2020 — 95 per cent — will endure an unprecedented exposure to heatwaves in their lifetime, compared to 78 per cent for the least vulnerable group, the authors said.
“Precisely the most vulnerable children experience the worst escalation of climate extremes. With limited resources and adaptation options, they face disproportionate risks,” Thiery said.>
