A recent study published in Nature reveals that more than 50% of children born in 2020 will face unprecedented exposure to heatwaves during their lifetimes due to climate change. This figure soars to 92% for current five-year-olds under pessimistic climate predictions, compared to just 16% of individuals born in 1960. The study emphasizes the urgent need to limit global warming to protect future generations, with co-author Wim Thiery highlighting that these predictions are particularly alarming for parents of young children. The research defines unprecedented environmental thresholds utilizing climate models and demographic data, underlining the extreme heat risk individuals will experience without intervention.
"Many people of my age have children, young children, and it's especially for those that the projections look very dire," says study co-author Wim Thiery.
The latest study is among the first to pinpoint the generations and numbers of people that will experience an "unprecedented life" in terms of extreme heat.
If you are beyond that limit, it's virtually impossible to experience that many climate extremes if there would not have been climate change.
The researchers define this as a threshold of lifetime exposure to extreme weather that someone living in a world without climate change would have only a one in 10,000 chance of experiencing.
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