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My parents said the planet was getting too hot for humans to live here. They called it climate change. What does that mean? – Joseph, 12, Boise, Idaho
Many countries have experienced extremely hot weather recently, but in most parts of the world it never becomes “too hot to live,” especially in relatively dry climates.
When it’s hot outside in dry places, our body can often cool down by water and warmth evaporating from our skin in the shape of sweat.
However, there are places where it occasionally gets dangerously hot and humid, especially where hot deserts are right next to the nice and cozy ocean. When the air is humid, sweat doesn’t evaporate as quickly, so sweating will not be cools us because it does in drier environments.
In parts of the Middle East, Pakistan and India Heat waves can mix with humid air blowing in from the ocean, and this mixture could be truly deadly. Hundreds of hundreds of thousands of individuals live in these regions, most without access to air-conditioned indoor spaces.
Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images
Scientists like me use a “Wet bulb thermometer” to get a greater sense of this risk. A wet bulb thermometer evaporates water by blowing ambient air over a moist cloth. When the wet bulb temperature is above 35 °C (95 °F), and even at lower values, the human body cannot allow enough heat outProlonged exposure to heat and moisture could be fatal.
During a severe heatwave in 2023, wet bulb temperatures were very high above the lower Mississippi Valleyalthough they didn’t reach lethal levels. In Delhi, India, where air temperatures were over 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius) on several days in May 2024, wet bulb temperatures approached, and a number of other People died of suspects heatstroke in hot and humid weather. In such conditions, everyone must take precautions.
Is it climate change?
When people Burn carbon – whether it’s coal in an influence plant or petrol in a vehicle – carbon dioxide (CO2). This invisible gas collects within the atmosphere and traps the sun's heat near the earth's surface.
The result’s what we understand as “climate change”.
Every piece of coal, oil or gas that’s ever burned adds just a little more to the temperatureAs temperatures rise, dangerously hot and humid weather is spreading to an increasing number of places.
Areas on the US Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas are increasingly Danger of dangerous heat and humidity conditions in summer, in addition to heavily irrigated areas within the desert southwest, where water sprayed over fields adds moisture to the atmosphere.
Climate change causes way more problems than simply hot, humid weather.
Hot air evaporates rather more water, drying out crops, forests and landscapes in some areas, making them more vulnerable to forest firesEvery degree Celsius of warming can Sixfold increase in forest fires over parts of the western USA
Warming also allows the ocean water to expandwhich might flood coastal regions. The rising sea level threatens to 2 billion people by 2100.
All these impacts mean that climate change is threatening the worldwide economy. The continued burning of coal, oil and gas could reduce global incomes by about 25% According to 1 estimate, by the top of the century.
Good and bad news
There is each bad and excellent news about future climate change.
The bad news is: As long as we proceed to burn carbon, is getting hotter and warmer.
The excellent news is that we Replacement for clean energyresembling solar and wind energy, for the combustion of carbon to provide energy within the services of contemporary life.
Tim Platt/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Over the last 15 years, enormous progress has been made in the event clean energy reliable and inexpensiveand almost every country on the earth now has agreed to stop climate change before an excessive amount of damage occurs.
Just as our ancestors improved their lives by switching from shed toilets to indoor plumbing, we will prevent our world from becoming uninhabitable by switching from coal, oil and gas to scrub energy.
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