In those regions, rainfall from weather events like monsoons enables agricultural productivity despite hot temperatures. There’s also a smaller second temperature regime with mean annual temperatures around 23–27☌ (73–80☏) in which many people in places like India and Brazil reside. Read: Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits That’s the climate in which conditions appear to be ideal for worker and agricultural productivity - humanity’s “just right” Goldilocks zone. That’s consistent with a 2015 study finding that societies’ optimal economic productivity happens in regions with an average temperature of about 13☌. The study found that most people in 1980 lived in areas where year-round temperatures averaged between about 7☌ and 17☌ (45–63☏), with a peak population density at 13☌ (55☏). The study’s authors selected the climate of 1980 as adequately representative of humans’ “climate niche.” At that time, global temperatures had only risen about 0.3☌ (0.5☏) above preindustrial levels. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter and never miss a story. The climate is changing, and our journalists are here to help you make sense of it. That could go a long way toward preventing the problems the study authors foresee, such as mounting risks of disease, less productive agriculture and labor, and rising risks of violence, unrest, and mass migration. For every tenth of a degree of global warming that society can avoid, more than 100 million people will remain in a more favorable climate. But the study also shows that making the right moves now will help immeasurably. Second, risks are growing for more dangerous extreme heat events like the 2021 heat wave that caused over 1,000 deaths in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. First, large populations find their home regions shifting outside of the Goldilocks zone that scientists call the “climate niche.” Two dangerous consequences of the fast changes were described in a new study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Like Baby Bear’s porridge to Goldilocks, for thousands of years, the climate over much of the planet was neither too hot nor too cold but “just right.” Those ideal conditions enabled people to develop advanced agriculture, build cities, and invent industry and advanced technology.īut after relatively stable surface temperatures during the past 7,000 years, global warming is now rapidly disrupting the reliable climate that allowed humanity to flourish.
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