MENA could see 9 degrees of warming by 2100

The Middle East and North Africa, which already include some of the hottest and driest spots on Earth, are undergoing accelerated climate change and will reach warming thresholds two to three decades earlier than the rest of the world, a new study reports. By 2100, parts of the Arabian Peninsula could experience up to 9 degrees Celsius (16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming.

The region, which already has record-breaking summer temperatures, is currently close to exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming on average compared to pre-industrial temperatures. Additional warming in the region could make some areas uninhabitable without adaption measures.

“When we talk about the Paris Agreement, we say that we should try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that we should not exceed two degrees Celsius,” said Abdul Malik, a climate scientist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the study’s lead author. “But in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, warming has already surpassed 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.”

The research was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, an open-access AGU journal that publishes research advancing the understanding of Earth’s atmosphere and its interaction with other components of the Earth system.

Modeling a rapidly warming region

The Middle East and North Africa are predominantly desert ecosystems, with most of the population living in coastal areas. Predictions from previous climate models have both over- and under-estimated warming in the region, so a more nuanced understanding of warming across the region has eluded scientists.

In this study, the researchers used CMIP5 and CMIP6 models to analyze the Middle East and North Africa at high spatial resolution (81 square kilometers, or approximately 50 square miles) and understand warming in the region in more detail.

“Although previous studies have shown that the region is warming much faster than other areas, we have shown that the warming rate is not consistent across the region,” Malik said. “And this warming rate could vary between 1.5 to 3.5 times faster than the global average.”

The rapid rate means that the Middle East and North Africa could reach 3 and 4 degrees Celsius of warming (5.4 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) nearly three decades earlier than most of the globe. That warming will be especially rapid in inland areas of the Arabian Peninsula.

A hot region gets hotter

The Middle East and North Africa include some of the hottest regions on the planet — and the researchers predict continued dramatic warming. The central Arabian Peninsula is already warming up to three times faster than the rest of the world, the study found. That rate is on par with warming in the Arctic.

By 2100, the Arabian Peninsula could warm on average by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) under low emission scenarios, and by 7.6 degrees Celsius (13.7 degrees Fahrenheit) under high emission scenarios.

That’s because the Middle East and North Africa’s dry deserts can’t easily cool down through soil moisture evaporation, in contrast to their humid equatorial counterparts elsewhere on the globe.

“Desert regions warm almost as fast as polar regions, and they have much higher temperatures,” said Georgiy Stenchikov, a retired climate scientist and one of the study’s coauthors. “So the temperature threshold is reached much faster than in polar regions.”

Because of coastal cooling, heavily populated areas along the southern and west coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, including Oman, are not currently warming as fast as inland areas and the peninsula’s east coast.

Warming rates are not consistent across the seasons. The researchers found summer hotspots over the central Arabian Peninsula, including the populous Riyadh Province, and Algeria, and winter hotspots over Mauritania and Iran’s Elburz Mountains.

If the world meets low-emissions targets, the rate of warming in the Middle East and North Africa could slow by up to 38%. Individual cities could also try to adapt to the extreme heat through urban greening and architectural solutions.

“Adaptation will be necessary, and these adaptation measures could be tested and developed in the Middle East and North Africa,” Stenchikov said. “Global warming is a global problem, so you cannot prevent it in just one place. But you can develop artificial environments in regions with high populations.”

(This study is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres with open access. )