BARCELONA, Spain – Scientists believe that rising temperatures from climate change within this century are likely to make the Persian Gulf region – including Islam’s holy city of Mecca – uninhabitable by humans.
According to a scientific study published in the authoritative Nature Climate Change journal on Monday, “temperatures in the region around the Persian Gulf are likely to approach and exceed the critical threshold under the business-as-usual scenario of future greenhouse gas concentrations.”
“Our results expose a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in the absence of significant mitigation, is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future,” said the study by a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and another at the Loyola Marymount University, also in the United States.
The authors warn that cities such as Doha in Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Bandar Abbas in Iran, could well surpass the 35 degrees Centigrade threshold for human survival in a 30-year period towards the end of the century.
Dangerous extremes are also projected for the Arabian Peninsula, where temperatures could climb near the threshold temperature.
This could be a particular concern, the authors note, because of the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca – where as many as 2 million pilgrims take part in rituals that include standing outdoors for a full day of prayers, sometimes during the hottest summer months.
While many in the Persian Gulf’s wealthier states might be able to adapt to new climate extremes, poorer areas, such as Yemen, might be less able to cope with such extremes, the authors say.
The study warns that record temperatures were almost reached this summer when, following a week-long heat wave in the region at the end of July, the temperature in the Iranian port of Bandahr Mashrahr hit 34.6 degrees Centigrade, just a fraction below the threshold, for about an hour.
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