We used temperature and humidity monitors to measure the heat index, which captures how hot it feels to the human body. To understand the risks of extreme heat to the people in this story: Methodology What we measured for this article

To survive the heat, Basra residents try to adapt. And the more temperatures rise, the greater the number of workers who will be affected.Īlready, the effects of extreme heat add up to hundreds of billions of dollars in lost work each year worldwide. Extreme heat is altering life across the globe, including in Pakistan, India, Tunisia, Mexico, central China and elsewhere. The heat also wears on infrastructure, leading to power outages and contaminated water. Sports and social life start late and end later, meaning that many whose workday begins before dawn struggle with constant sleep deprivation. At 9 a.m., they quit for the day.Īcross Basra and the wider Gulf region, people’s lives have been reshaped by the extreme heat.Įven if they can adapt their schedule, as Kadhim has, and start their job in the middle of the night, it is still so hot that exhaustion truncates the workday, reducing productivity and chipping away at earnings.Īt a society-wide level, it means every project takes longer to get done.Īnd it makes doing anything else - from working a second job to going to school - doubly difficult. It was just an average August day in Basra, a city on the leading edge of climate change - and a glimpse of the future for much of the planet as human carbon emissions warp the climate.īy 2050, nearly half the world may live in areas that have dangerous levels of heat for at least a month, including Miami, Lagos and Shanghai, according to projections by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Washington.īy 7:22 a.m., it was too hot to keep going on the roof, so they ate breakfast in the shade and switched to indoor tasks. Yet what Abbas was experiencing wasn’t a heatwave. “It feels like the heat is coming out of my head,” he said.Īt these extreme temperatures, normal life is impossible. The blood reaching Abbas’s brain was probably reduced for about an hour, as the blood flow was needed elsewhere.

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