Study: Being outside could become deadly in South Asia

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ABC News


Venturing outdoors may become deadly across wide swaths of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by the end of the century as climate change drives heat and humidity to new extremes, according to a new study.

These conditions could affect up to a third of the people living throughout the Indo-Gangetic Plain unless the global community ramps up efforts to rein in climate-warming carbon emissions. Today, that vast region is home to some 1.5 billion people.

"The most intense hazard from extreme future heat waves is concentrated around the densely populated agricultural regions of the Ganges and Indus river basins," wrote the authors of the study, led by former MIT research scientist Eun-Soon Im, now an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

While most climate studies have been based on temperature projections, this one — published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances — is somewhat unique in also considering humidity as well as the body's ability to cool down in response.

Those three factors together make up what is called a "wet-bulb temperature," which is the air temperature taken when a wet cloth is wrapped around the thermometer. It is always lower than the dry-bulb temperature — how much so depends on the humidity. It can help estimate how easy it is for water to evaporate.

It can also offer a gauge for where climate change might become dangerous.