A new Duke-led study shows that if Earth warms another 2 Celsius, it will no longer be safe to do outdoor labor on summer afternoons in many low-latitude regions. Credit: Duke University.
A new study by Duke University finds that climate change will lead to significant worldwide labor losses if there are less options for moving outdoor labor to cooler hours.
If the temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius, the economic losses associated with lost productivity will reach up to $1.6 trillion annually.
Workers in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the western Pacific will be the worst affected.
Many of the countries and people most impacted by current and future labor losses are not responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study led by a climate researcher.
Many workers in the tropics are stopping work in the afternoon because it's too hot. About 30% of the lost labor can be recovered by moving it to the early morning. With each degree of global warming, workers' ability to adapt this way will decrease as the days become too hot for continuous outdoor labor.
If global temperatures rise by another 2 degrees Celsius, the labor losses in the hottest half of the day will surpass those in the lowest half. Critical jobs, such as agricultural work and construction work, will become almost impossible to perform safely in the summer in many places.
India, China, Pakistan, and Indonesia, where larger fractions of the population work outdoors, will experience the biggest losses, according to the study. They are: Bangladesh, Thailand, Gambia, Cambodia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Brunei Darussalam, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Sri Lanka and Nauru.
The paper was published in Nature Communications. Under a global temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius, 2 degrees Celsius, 3 degrees Celsius and 4 degrees Celsius, they project future labor losses for every country.
If we limit warming to within another degree of current levels, we can still avoid most worker productivity losses by moving heavy labor to the early morning hours. It becomes more difficult if the temperature goes over 1 degrees Celsius. He said that the curve gets worse as the temperature rises.
The scientists used a blend of observation-based meteorological data and climate model projections of temperature and humidity to estimate humid heat exposure, current labor losses and projected future labor losses under additional warming.
More information is available from Nature Communications. There is a DOI titled: 10.1038/s41467-021-27328-y.
Nature Communications is a journal.
As Earth warms, safe times for outdoor work will shrink.
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