Energy-rich Qatar faces fast-rising climate risks at home

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Energy-rich Qatar faces fast-rising climate risks at home

By SUMAN NAISHADHAM
November 26, 2022

AL RAYYAN, Qatar (AP) — At a suburban park near Doha, the capital city of Qatar, cool air from vents in the ground blasted joggers on a November day that reached almost 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).

The small park with air-conditioned paths is an apt illustration of World Cup host Qatar’s answers, so far, to the rising temperatures its people face. The wealthy Gulf Arab nation has been able to pay for extreme adaptive measures like this thanks to the natural gas it exports to the world.

A small peninsula that juts out into the Persian Gulf, Qatar sits in a region that, outside the Arctic, is warming faster than anyplace else on earth.

“It’s already bad. And it’s getting worse,” said Jos Lelieveld, an atmospheric chemist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute. Part of the reason is the warming waters of the Persian Gulf, a shallow, narrow sea that contributes to stifling humidity in Qatar during some months.

“It’s a pretty difficult environment. It’s quite hostile,” said Karim Elgendy, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank. Without its ability to pay for imported food, heavy air-conditioning and desalinated ocean water, he said, the contemporary country couldn’t exist.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-science-sports-soccer-business-7012f26fb54e9fe19a3eece354389282


Al Gharafa Park is viewed in Doha, Qatar, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022. Qatar unveiled a plan last October to cut its emissions by a quarter by 2030. Then, Russia invaded Ukraine and made the Persian Gulf nation's liquid natural gas only more sought after. Demand for fossil fuels has brought immense wealth to Qatar, but in the coming decades, it could also make one of the world's hottest places unlivable. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

[progree]

1. Reminds me of this piece on Kuwait from early this year

Some may not be particularly sympathetic to Kuwait, but of course this is not just about Kuwait, but rather the vast desert Middle East and North Africa ... and beyond.

https://news.abplive.com/news/world/global-warming-one-of-the-world-s-richest-countries-is-getting-too-hot-to-live-says-report-1506932

One of the World's Wealthiest Oil Exporters Is Becoming Unlivable, January 16, 2022

Global warming is smashing temperature records all over the world, but Kuwait — one of the hottest countries on the planet — is fast becoming unlivable. In 2016, thermometers hit 54C, the highest reading on Earth in the last 76 years. Last year, for the first time, they breached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in June, weeks ahead of usual peak weather. Parts of Kuwait could get as much as 4.5C hotter from 2071 to 2100 compared with the historical average, according to the Environment Public Authority, making large areas of the country uninhabitable.

For wildlife, it almost is. Dead birds appear on rooftops in the brutal summer months, unable to find shade or water. Vets are inundated with stray cats, brought in by people who’ve found them near death from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Even wild foxes are abandoning a desert that no longer blooms after the rains for what small patches of green remain in the city, where they’re treated as pests.

... Born in 1959, he remembers growing up when homes rarely had air conditioners, yet felt cool and shaded, even in the hottest months. As a child, he played outside through months of cooler weather and slept on the roof in the summers; it’s too hot for that now. Children spend most of the year indoors to protect them from either burning sun or hazardous pollution, something that’s contributed to deficiencies in vitamin D — which humans generate when exposed to the sun — and respiratory ailments."