Children born today are likely to face seven times more extreme weather events than their grandparents

Extreme weather events are becoming much more common. This year in China, ferocious floods forced more than 1m to relocate; fires ravaged Greece all summer, blotting out the sun; heatwaves killed almost 700 people in Canada and 600 in America. Meanwhile, Russia reported the largest fires in its history, while Texas grappled with unprecedented snow. Record-shattering high temperatures have been recorded everywhere, from Spain to Siberia.

New research published in Science, an academic journal, attempts to estimate how many of these extreme events young people will face over their lifetimes. Drawing on multiple climate and demographic models, the researchers estimate lifetime exposure to six extreme weather events—wildfires, crop failures, droughts, river floods, heat waves and tropical cyclones—for every generation born between 1960 and 2020 under scenarios ranging from 1.5°C and 3.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels.

The results are alarming. Children born in 2020 will face a two- to seven-fold increase in extreme climate-related events compared to those born in 1960, under current climate pledges. Those born in 1960, for example, will experience four heat waves in their lifetime; those born in 2020 will experience 30 on current trends, 22 under 2°C warming, and 18 if warming is limited to 1.5°C. In a 3°C world, a six-year-old in 2020 will experience twice as many wildfires and tropical cyclones, three times more river floods, four times more crop failures, five times more droughts, and 36 times more heat waves than someone born in 1960.

There will be wide geographic disparities, too. Younger generations from poor countries—particularly those in the Middle East and north Africa—will face greater exposure to extremes than those in richer ones. The authors reckon that the burden is “substantially reduced” when warming is limited to 1.5°C. Exposure to heatwaves, for example, would drop by 40%. But even with rapid, dramatic emissions cuts, much of the damage is now unavoidable.

For many young people, this will not be news. A recent survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 in ten countries found that 75% of young people are frightened of the future; 45% said concerns about climate change affected their daily lives. The countries with the highest levels of anxiety tended to be those suffering the the most severe effects of climate change, including the Philippines and India.

Last week young people in 99 countries took part in a coordinated climate strike to demand that leaders take stronger measures to curb climate change ahead of the UN’s annual climate summit in Glasgow. Developing countries, and the youth protesters, point out that it is those that have contributed the least to global warming who are suffering the most. ■

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