Climate change may make parts of Middle East 'uninhabitable': Study

The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius will not be sufficient, the researchers said

Climate change may render parts of the Middle East and North Africa uninhabitable, forcing the residents to leave the region which is home to over 500 million people, a new study has warned.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised.

The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent United Nations climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario, researchers said.

The temperature during summer in the already very hot Middle East and North Africa will increase more than two times faster compared to the average global warming, they said.

This means that during hot days, temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius by mid-century.

Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate, researchers said.

More than 500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa — a region which is very hot in summer and where climate change is already evident. The number of extremely hot days has doubled since 1970, they said.

"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 from Max Planck Institute.

Researchers studied how temperatures will develop in the Middle East and North Africa over the course of the 21st century.

The result is deeply alarming, even if Earth's temperature were to increase on average only by two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, the temperature in summer in these regions will increase more than two-fold, researchers said.

By mid-century, during the warmest periods, temperatures will not fall below 30 degrees at night, and during daytime they could rise to 46 degrees Celsius, they said.

By the end of the century, midday temperatures on hot days could even climb to 50 degrees Celsius, researchers said.

Another finding was that heat waves could occur ten times more often than they do now.

In addition, the duration of heat waves in North Africa and the Middle East will prolong dramatically, researchers said.

"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 from Cyprus Institute.

The findings were published in the journal Climatic Change.