Seasonal cycles enhance disparities between low- and high-income countries in exposure to monthly temperature emergence with future warming

Environmental Research Letters (2017)

This study presents an interpretation of how monthly temperature changes forecasted for future climate change might affect high and low income populations.

Our results demonstrate that emergence into genuinely ‘unfamiliar’ climates will occur for 2-10 months of the year for low-income nations by 2050 under an RCP8.5 warming scenario.

However, high income countries in middle latitudes commonly experience a large seasonal cycle: thus, temperature emergence for transitional months translates only to more-frequent occurrences of heat historically associated with summer.

Spatial patterns of emergence may therefore compound existing differences between high and low income populations, in terms of their capacity to adapt to unprecedented future temperatures.