REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Dark clouds pass over downtown Miami.
- As global temperatures and sea levels rise, some of the world's major cities could experience unbearable living conditions.
- Cities like Chicago and Delhi have already endured fatal heat waves, which could get worse in the future.
- While climate scientists don't anticipate any location to become fully uninhabitable, they worry that some areas will struggle to support human life.
As scientific projections of the impacts of climate change become more robust, the threats of extreme storms, catastrophic flooding, heatwaves, and droughts have gotten clearer and more frightening.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that global temperatures could rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels - the threshold for severe effects of climate change - by 2040. By the turn of the century, temperatures could climb even higher, spelling disaster in some areas.
In the future, cities that are prone to flooding or heat waves could see more severe, and potentially fatal, weather conditions. With this in mind, scientists have begun to pinpoint locations that could become unbearable for humans by the turn of the century.
The following 10 cities might soon struggle to support human life. And for the most part, these areas are already witnessing the devastating effects of climate change.