Climate Change Will Soon Make Middle East And North Africa Unfit For Habitation: Study

Frighteningly, climate change might shoot up the temperatures in the Middle East and North Africa so much so that they will no longer be inhabitable, according to scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia. Experts believe that the current goal to bring down global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius might not even be enough to keep the area above the habitable zone.

With the hot summers in the Middle East and North Africa, temperatures are expected to rise two times faster compared to the average pace of global warming. In the south of the Mediterranean, temperatures are believed to touch about 46 degrees Celsius by the middle of the century.

Information reveals that the hot days will strike five times more often than they struck in the beginning of the millennium.

"In future, the climate in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa could change in such a manner that the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy," said Jos Lelieveld, director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, professor at The Cyprus Institute and first author of the study.

Hence, even if the earth's temperature inches up by an average of 2 degrees Celsius in comparison to the pre-industrial times, the temperature in the Middle East and North Africa will increase more than twofold. With temperatures in the night not expected to fall below 30 degrees Celsius in the warmest seasons, they could rise by 46 degrees Celsius in the day. Heat waves, meanwhile, might strike the earth about 10 times more often.

"If mankind continues to release carbon dioxide as it does now, people living in the Middle East and North Africa will have to expect about 200 unusually hot days, according to the model projections," said Panos Hadjinicolaou, an associate professor at The Cyprus Institute  and co-author of the study.

Lelieveld and Hadjinicolaou believe that even if we succeed to stall climate change, people living in the Middle East and North Africa will be forced to leave the region, which will become uninhabitable.

The findings were published in the April 23 issue of Climate Change.