EU Study - Baghdad Will Experience At Least 40 Days/Yr At Or Over 120 By 2040 (12 Days Now)

[hatrack]

A report from the European Union Institute of Security Studies projects that the number of days when temperatures in Baghdad hit 120 degrees will go from roughly 14 per year to more than 40 over the next two decades. The study forecasts that the Iraqi capital, which is already seeing longer heat waves each summer and higher peak temperatures, will be one of the places hardest hit by global warming. Baghdad set a new record high of 125.2 degrees on July 28, 2020. The next day it cooled down to 124.

In summer the Baghdad city government now regularly declares “heat holidays” ordering residents to stay home. “When it gets to 50 degrees (122 Fahrenheit) we already stay at home,” says 70-year-old Razak Abdul-Zahra Mubarak, one of dozens of street vendors in Al Maidan square in Baghdad. “We don’t need the government to tell us to get out of the sun … when it gets like that.”

EDIT

Adding to the problem, some parts of Baghdad will be even hotter than others. One study last year by Iraqi researchers found that peak temperatures in different areas of the capital varied by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit on exactly the same day. Some parts of the urban landscape, particularly parts of downtown dominated by high-rise cement office buildings and an area in the south of Baghdad near the gas flares of an oil refinery, heat up more than areas on the edges of the city.

(Ed. - EU Institute For Security Studies Florence) Gaub says better planning, more green space, planting even a few more trees could all help offset the effects of climate change in Baghdad. “But this is the tragedy of Iraq,” she says. “Not so much the extent to which climate change will affect it, but that there are tools to meet this challenge. Yet there is mismanagement on such a large scale that Iraq will essentially become a hostile environment for human beings down the line.”

EDIT

https://wbhm.org/npr_story_post/2022/why-baghdad-will-be-one-of-the-cities-hardest-hit-by-global-warming/

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Free sauna

People will become very thin as toxins leach out. Human appendages that vent heat - ears, nose - will become large. Long, thin people.