Even if the world keeps to the Paris agreement, Australia could be battling deadly heatwaves every year in just a lifetime, new research has suggested.
An article published online in Communications Earth and Environment put forward a grim forecast about what the world might look like in 2100 – 78 years from now.
Tropical regions, including northern Australia, could be exposed to “dangerously high” heat most days of the year, while even cooler latitudes in the rest of the country would be subject to regular deadly heatwaves.
In Australia, they have been responsible for more deaths than any other natural disaster – including bushfires, floods and cyclones.
During the 1939 Black Friday bushfires, 71 people died in Victoria, government sources show.
But at least 420 people died in the heatwaves leading up to those fires, mostly in New South Wales.
