One of the major concerns in climate change studies is how the thermal conditions for the living environment of human beings will change in the future. In a paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, Prof. GAO Xuejie from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his coauthors, try to answer this question based on their recently completed and unprecedented set of high-resolution (25 km) 21st century climate change simulations. These simulations were produced using the regional climate model RegCM4, driven by four global model simulations over China—the country with the world’s largest population.
One of the major concerns in climate change studies is how the thermal conditions for the living environment of human beings will change in the future. In a paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, Prof. GAO Xuejie from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his coauthors, try to answer this question based on their recently completed and unprecedented set of high-resolution (25 km) 21st century climate change simulations. These simulations were produced using the regional climate model RegCM4, driven by four global model simulations over China—the country with the world’s largest population.
The index of effective temperature (ET), which considers the aggregate effects of temperature, relative humidity, and wind on human thermal perception is used in the analysis. “Based on ET values, we classify thermal perception into different categories, ranging from 'very hot’, 'hot’, 'warm’, 'comfortable’, to ‘cool’, 'cold’, and ‘very cold’”, explains GAO.
The authors found that a general increase in ET in the future leads to a large increase in population exposure to very hot days, a China-aggregated six-fold increase in “person-days” by the end of the 21st century under the RCP4.5 scenario. The largest increase in very hot person-days is found in the region extending from the Yangtze River valley to North China, along with the southern coasts and the Sichuan Basin.
Read more at Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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