On a hospital bed in Niger, a 96-year-old woman lay motionless attached to a drip – one of thousands of possible victims of West Africa’s worstin living memory, which a report said on Thursday was linked to fossil fuel-driven climate change.
The severity of the heatwave led WWA’s team of climate scientists to conduct a rapid analysis, which concluded the temperatures would not have been reached if the industry had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels and other activities. On the current trajectory, if fossil fuel emissions do not fall “we would expect to see heatwaves like this maybe ten times more frequently, so potentially up to ten times a year,” Barnes said.Given the growing threat, the group recommends that countries formulate heat action plans that would warn citizens when extreme temperatures are imminent and offer guidance on how to prevent overheating.
They were among an unusually high number of patients seeking care at the facility in Niger’s sun-baked capital Niamey, said doctor Andia Abdoul-Kader.“It really affects the elderly … four to five litres of water need to be replenished for the patient to return to normal.”