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A taxi driver in Calcutta, India quenches his thirst
Photo: Avijit Ghosh / ZUMA Press / IMAGO
If the so-called cooling limit temperature is reached by heat and moisture, the person dies after a few hours.
Under the appropriate conditions, the body can no longer give off heat to the environment from around 35 degrees Celsius, but absorbs heat.
A healthy person can survive at such temperatures for about six hours.
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According to a study by the Met Office, the UK's national meteorological service, the potentially fatal danger of extremely high temperatures and high humidity will threaten many millions of people in the future - with a mean temperature rise of two degrees Celsius, one billion people will suffer from extreme heat .
The Met Office presented this study at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, as reported by the British newspaper "The Guardian".
15 times as many people would be threatened
According to the scientists involved, with a two-degree increase compared to today, 15 times as many people would be affected by extreme heat.
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In the analysis by the Met Office, the researchers did not calculate with the temperature limit of 35 degrees, at which death threatens after a few hours, but with a cooling limit temperature of 32 degrees.
Above this value, working people have to rest regularly in order to avoid heat stroke.
If the global community's efforts to limit global warming failed and temperatures rose by four degrees, half of the world's population would suffer from this extreme heat load for at least ten days a year.
Hundreds of thousands die as a result of heat waves
Heat is one of the most obvious effects of global warming.
The heat is increasing in cities around the world.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 166,000 people worldwide died as a result of heat waves in the two decades up to 2017.
Tropical countries like Brazil, Ethiopia and India are hardest hit by extreme heat - some regions so badly that people there can barely live.
According to a study from 2015, this could be the case in the Gulf region in the Middle East.
A study from 2018 shows that the densely northern Chinese plains could also be increasingly threatened by fatal heat waves. The area is one of the most densely populated regions in the world and the most important area for food production in China.
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