More than half the children born in 2020 to face unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves: Study

Around 62.11 million children, or 51.70 per cent of those born in 2020, are expected to experience an unparalleled lifetime exposure to heatwaves, even with global warming restricted to a 1.5 degree Celsius rise, a new study indicated.

The report was published by Save the Children, a global non-governmental organisation, along with Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a research university located in Brussels, Belgium.

Children born in 2020 are expected to encounter unparalleled climate extremes during their lives, the research showed. With current climate scenarios likely leading to a 2.7°C increase in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels, around 100 million of the estimated 120 million children born in 2020, or 83 per cent, will be exposed to extreme heat throughout their lifetimes, the analysts found.

The study further explored a more intense scenario where global temperatures increase to 3.5°C by 2100. In this situation, about 92 per cent of children born in 2020, roughly 111 million, would encounter unparalleled lifetime exposure to heatwaves. Here, ‘unprecedented’ means exposure to climate extremes that would have only a 1 in 10,000 chance of occurring during one’s lifetime in a world without human-caused climate change. Essentially, it refers to new levels of climate extremes never experienced before, which the climate crisis now compels us to deal with.