The large parts of the tropics will face dangerous life and working conditions if global warming is not limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. One of the goals of the Paris Agreement is to provide another reason for limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius: this will help prevent the tropics from becoming a deadly home.
There is cutting greenhouse gas emissions rapidly below this threshold, which has been equivalent to about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, has led to tropical extreme heat and high humidity. This will help avoid installments of Ultra Gate Bulb Temperature or TW, which is beyond the scope of human survival. This study is in line with other recent studies which have shown that extreme heat and humidity are one of the deadly consequences of global warming. In this region, from north to south, about 3,000, miles away, a band is in the equator around the earth, covering most of South and East Asia, Central America and Central Africa. Its total population is over 3 billion.
The temperature of the wet bulb is higher than 35 degrees Celsius; the body cannot cool down, because the sweat on the skin no longer evaporates. Prolonged exposure to such conditions can be fatal, even for healthy people. Low but still high wet bulb temperatures can affect health and productivity in other ways.
The 1.5 degree warming target was one to two degrees lower than the United Nations’ Paris Agreement on Climate Change. But the world has already warmed 1 degree since 1900, and the ability to stay below targets is slowly declining, far short of the need to reduce emissions from both achieved and promised countries.
The growing body of research has found that global temperatures are still rising due to the spread of insect-borne diseases caused by indirect droughts and crop failures, severe storms and floods.
