Purdue University researchers project a 200 to 500 percent increase in the number of dangerously hot days in the Mediterranean by the end of the 21st century if the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions continues. The study found that France would be subjected to the largest increase of high-temperature extremes. The study also showed a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the intensity of dangerously hot days by up to 50 percent.
A 2003 heat wave led to 15,000 deaths in France and almost 3,000 in Italy. The researchers found that global warming causes summer temperatures to dramatically exceed the range that was correlated with the increased number of deaths. "Rare events today, like the 2003 heat wave in Europe, will become much more common as greenhouse gas concentrations increase," said Noah Diffenbaugh, the Purdue assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the study. "The frequency at which that scale of events occurs at high greenhouse gas concentrations is staggering, and the extreme events of the future are unprecedented in their severity."
The study covered the entire Mediterranean area, which includes 21 countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The researchers used a supercomputer in the National Climate Center in Beijing to run the climate model. The researchers found that with the projected shift to more severe temperatures, the daily temperatures currently found in the hottest two weeks of the summer instead are found in the coldest two weeks of the summer in the future climate scenario.
