Projected Impact of Increased Global Warming on Heat Stress and Exposed Population Over Africa

This study investigates the impact of increased global warming on heat stress changes and the potential number of people exposed to heat risks over Africa. For this purpose a heat index has been computed based on an ensemble‐mean of high‐resolution regional climate model simulations from the Coordinated Output for Regional Evaluations embedded in the COordinated Regional Climate Downscaling EXperiment, under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) scenarios (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5), combined with projections of population growth developed based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) scenarios (SSP1 and SSP5). Results show that by the late 21st century, the increased global warming is expected to induce a 12‐fold increase in the area extent affected by heat stress of high‐risk level. This would result in an increase of about 10%–30% in the number of days with high‐risk heat conditions, as well as about 6%–20% in their magnitude throughout the seasonal cycle over West, Central, and North‐East Africa. Therefore, and because of the lack of adaptation and mitigation policies, the exacerbation of ambient heat conditions could contribute to the exposure of about 2–8.5 million person‐events to heat stress of high‐risk level over Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria. Furthermore, it was found that the interaction effect between the climate change and population growth seems to be the most dominant in explaining the total changes in exposure due to moderate and high heat‐related risks over all subregions of the African continent.

Plain Language Summary: This study investigates the impact of increased global warming on heat stress changes and the potential number of persons likely to be exposed to heat risks over Africa. Results show that by the end of the 21st century, the increased global warming is expected to induce a 12‐fold increase in the total area affected by dangerous heat conditions over the continent. This would result in an increase of about 10%–30% in the number of days with these heat conditions, as well as about 6%–20% in their magnitude throughout the seasonal cycle over West, Central and North‐East Africa. Therefore, because of the lack of adaptation and mitigation policies, the exacerbation of ambient heat conditions could contribute to the exposure of about 2–8.5 million person‐events to heat stress of high‐risk level over Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria. Since these heat events would be partly driven by interactions effects between climate change and population growth, efficient measures allowing not only to mitigate the increased greenhouse gas emissions, but also the effects of high heat on the human body must be urgently implemented on the affected countries' scale, in order to significantly decrease the vulnerability of their populations to potential heat‐related health problems.

Key Points: Increased global warming induces more spatially and temporally widespread extreme heat events over West, Central and North‐East Africa. Populations of some West African countries are projected to be particularly exposed to moderate and high heat conditions. Change in population exposure to dangerous heat categories is mainly driven by the interaction effect between climate and population growth.

Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001655

Projekt DEAL

https://esg-dn1.nsc.liu.se/search/cordex/

https://esgf-data.dkrz.de/projects/esgf-dkrz/

https://www.isimip.org/gettingstarted/details/31

https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/popdynamics-1-8th-pop-base-year-projection-ssp-2000-2100-rev01/data-download

https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=form