Nearly half of world’s population to face extreme heat by 2050: Oxford study

Almost half of the world’s population will be living in extreme heat conditions by 2050 if the world reaches 2°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, a scenario that climate scientists see as increasingly likely, new research by scientists from University of Oxford showed. 

This means that people experiencing extreme heat conditions will double from 23 per cent (1.54 billion people) in 2010 to 41 per cent (3.79 billion) by 2050, with the largest projected populations affected in India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines. 

In fact, in many regions, most of the impacts will be felt early on as global warming breaches the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement, according to the findings published in Nature Sustainability.