Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just published a report in Nature Climate Change that details how a warming climate impacts the way we work.
NOAA discovered that over the last 60 years, the hotter, wetter climate has decreased human labor capacity by 10%. And it projects that by 2050, the number will double.
The computer model looked at several internationally-accepted scenarios of the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions are projected to rise over the coming years.
Of which, one scenario projects that the emissions stabilize and fall as the globe switches to renewable fuels. Even in that moderate case, researchers found that by 2050, ‘heat stress’ from working outside or in extremely hot facilities, would reduce work capacity during the summer months by up to 80% of what it is during the rest of the year.
The reasons are simple: we humans can only work so hard in the heat, no matter how hard we try. Humans are endothermic creatures which means we give off heat. If we can't get rid of it faster, we go into hyperthermia. It may get so hot and humid by 2050 that even a sleeping person wouldn't be able to dissipate heat fast enough. In other words, it could turn so hot that it will be nearly impossible to work!
In the worst-case scenario, by 2200, summer work capacity could fall below 40 percent, and New York City would suffer more heat stress than anywhere else on Earth right now. Heat stress in New York City would likely exceed that of present-day Bahrain, while Bahrain would literally be off the map!
John Dunne, the lead author of the NOAA study, says, “the only way to retain labor capacity is to limit global warming to less than 3⁰C.
Jatin Singh, CEO of Skymet Weather presents a different view on the matter, “These studies are practically useless if effects of global warming, leading to changing weather patterns in India and other countries, and the importance of weather in our daily lives are not incorporated as an urgent subject in schools and colleges. Being educated on the matter can take us a long way.”