Kids born in 2021 will witness more wildfires, floods and droughts than their grandparents

Regarding droughts, heatwaves, river floods and crop failures, people under the age of 40 today will live what the researchers call "an unprecedented life".

During his or her lifetime, a child born in 2021 will experience on an average twice as many wildfires, between two and three times more droughts, almost three times more river floods and crop failures, and seven times more heatwaves compared to a person who's for instance 60 years old today, researchers have said.

This will be the situation worldwide climatically under the current greenhouse gas emission reduction pledges by governments across the world, a topic for negotiation at the upcoming world climate summit COP26 at Glasgow in the UK. World leaders will be discussing mitigation and adaptation measures to be taken to keep the global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era.

Based on data from the Inter-sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP), researchers have shown in the journal 'Science' how today's children will be hit much harder by climate extremes than today's adults. The study 'Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes' was published on Sunday, according to a release by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany.