The World Resources Institute (WRI) stated on Thursday, there would be skyrocketing demand for cooling and more widespread disease risk under a 3 degrees Celsius warming scenario.
New data on the 1,000 largest cities under different warming scenarios highlighted growing hazards and the urgent need for climate adaptation investment, the WRI said.
At 3 degrees Celsius, most cities could expect longer and more frequent heatwaves compared to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, impacting public health, labour capacity and productivity.
In a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming scenario, the longest heatwave each year may last an average of 16.3 days, with 3 per cent of the largest cities experiencing heatwaves lasting one month or longer annually.
Under 3 degrees Celsius of warming, the average duration of the longest heatwave could jump to 24.5 days, with more than 16 per cent of cities exposed to at least one heatwave lasting a month or longer every year.
At 1.5 degrees Celsius, about 8.7 million people could face a 100 per cent increase in their cooling demand. That number rises to 194 million people in cities under a 3 degrees Celsius scenario.
“The difference between 1.5 degrees Celcius and 3 degrees Celcius has life or death consequences for billions of people worldwide,” said Rogier van den Berg, WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities global director.
“This data should serve as a wakeup call to every city and national government leader: now is the time to start preparing cities for a much hotter world, while doing everything we can to slash emissions.”
At the 2015 climate conference in Paris, the global community set itself the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times.
