Abstract
The present study analyzes the Survivability for a Fit Human Threshold (SFHT) maximum temperature during the summer (June–August) over the six Middle Eastern countries known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the twenty-first century. An ensemble of three dynamically downscaled global climate models available from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emission scenarios is used to analyze the future climate (2006–2099) over the region. The ground-truth air temperature for ten major cities across the GCC countries is utilized for model evaluation and to estimate the model-simulated temperature biases. Both positive and negative biases found during the present climate (1976–2005) are used to adjust the future temperature changes. These adjustments show that the summer maximum temperature is likely to increase continuously for most cities in the GCC countries at the rate of about 0.2 °C (0.6 °C) per decade under RCP4.5 (RCP8.5) for the future period (2020–2099), which is significant at the 99% confidence level. For RCP8.5, the adjusted summer maximum temperature may exceed the SFHT limit of 42 °C in five capital cities of the GCC states and four major cities of Saudi Arabia. The projections based on adjusted values indicate that the average summer maximum temperature should not exceed 52 °C in any city investigated by the end of the twenty-first century. The daily maximum temperature is projected to exceed 55 °C in some cities in the GCC region by the end of the twenty-first century under a business-as-usual scenario that seems to be unrealistic if the biases are not taken into account. It is highly recommended that the GCC states should coordinate their efforts to respond appropriately to these projections using large ensembles of multimodel simulations while allowing for the associated uncertainty.
Highlights
There is a well-recognized link between increased ambient summer temperatures and adverse health outcomes
0.2 °C (0.6 °C) per decade under RCP4.5 (RCP8.5) for the future period (2020–2099), which is significant at the 99% confidence level
People who live in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have a sound scientific reason to worry, because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), provided a clear indication of increasing global temperature (IPCC 2013) that projects a steady increase in local temperature over this region
Summary
There is a well-recognized link between increased ambient summer temperatures and adverse health outcomes. People in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries—. Kingdom of Bahrain, State of Kuwait, Sultanate of. Qatar—are worried about the “survivability for a fit human threshold (SFHT)” temperature in the coming decades, at the end of the twenty-first century. The. SFHT is the highest temperature that is tolerable for a healthy human under well-ventilated outdoor conditions (Im et al.2017). People who live in the GCC states have a sound scientific reason to worry, because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), provided a clear indication of increasing global temperature (IPCC 2013) that projects a steady increase in local temperature over this region. The temperature threshold varies from place to place and from season to season, because of the variability of relative humidity as well as prevailing wind speed and direction.
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