Future change of humid heat extremes and population exposure in Turkey

Abstract

Global climate projections show that humid heat extremes will expand toward the higher latitudes, making the midlatitudes hotspots for these extremes. Therefore, a thorough explanation of their regional characteristics becomes crucial, given that the changes in these extremes can potentially render a large proportion of the global population at risk. Here, we perform the first analysis of historical and projected changes in the intensity and frequency of humid heat extremes and quantify the population exposure to these extremes in Turkey, using long-term simulations from the non-hydrostatic mesoscale model of Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO-CLM) under the RCP8.5 emission scenario. We portray not only the nationwide changes in the humid heat extremes and population exposure but also their regional aspects by exploiting the K-means clustering algorithm. Our results suggest significant future increases in the intensity and frequency of these extremes over a wide geographical area, which includes the surroundings of Adana, Antalya, Izmir, Sakarya, Ordu and Diyarbakir, most of which are coastal locations. Over most of these regions, severe humid heat stress is expected to last nearly a month every year, with almost 56% of the land area is projected to experience local historical upper tail heat stress conditions for at least an additional 10 consecutive hours. Further, we explicate a significant rise in the number of people exposed to severe humid heat stress, concentrated along most coastal regions, by as much as 1.6 million person-days. More than 20% of Turkey's population may confront severe humid heat stress for at least 1 h, with that percentage falling to 4.15% for at least five consecutive hours, which indicates that people will not only endure more intense humid heat stress but also be exposed to these conditions consecutively over a period of many hours.