Brazil won’t be uninhabitable by 2070: Understand the truth behind the study’s distortion

A NASA article titled “Too Hot to Handle: How Climate Change Could Make Some Places Too Hot to Live In” This led many to publicize on the networks the announcement that a NASA study had found that Brazil was uninhabitable within 50 years due to high planetary temperatures.

In the text of the article written by the NASA Scientific Editorial Team, the authors write, Increase in extreme heat and humidity events caused by global warming. So the text continues: “Climate scientists are tracking a key measure of heat stress that could alert us to harmful conditions.”

At this point, the article refers to a study called “Heat and humidity too intense for human tolerance”, which introduced the concept of the wet bulb (TW), a standard unit for measuring “thermal stress”. However, neither in this article dated May 8, 2020 nor in NASA’s news does it mention that our country will become uninhabitable in 50 years. Brazil is not even mentioned in the study.

What is the wet bulb mentioned in the NASA study?

In our TecMundo article on the subject published on the 22nd, we repeated the information about wet bulb temperature quoted from NASA’s website: “It measures how well our body cools down through sweat when it is hot and humid, tells us whether conditions could be harmful or even fatal to our health“.

The first author of a 2020 study on extreme heat and humidity, Colin Raymond from Columbia University in the US, said that the maximum TW temperature that humans can withstand when exposed to the elements for at least six hours is Around 35°C.

TW is a measurement that combines air temperature with relative humidity, reflecting the body’s cooling capacity through sweat evaporation, as well as increases in global temperatures. Like the record of 17.09 °C seen on July 21, 2024, they also raise the wet bulb temperature.

So how did our country get on the “uninhabitable” list?

The study map (with observed extreme wet heat events) also has an interactive version: https://t.co/TST7VRDzQV pic.twitter.com/pbRhdxJBlC

— Karina Lima (@KariLimaX) July 24, 2024

Research conducted by Raymond in 2020 focuses on the danger posed by humid heat, which has proven to be more intense than previously thought. In this sense, Brazil is not directly mentioned. The results only suggest that, continuing with the current emissions scenario, “TW could regularly exceed 35 °C in parts of South Asia and the Middle East by the third quarter of the 21st century.”

At the very end of NASA’s 2022 article, Raymond, author of the study who works at the North American space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mentions countries where temperatures are expected to exceed 35 ° C: “South Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea by 2050; and eastern China, parts of Southeast Asia and Brazil by 2070″.

This is the only quote from our country in the NASA article. For researcher Pedro Camarinha from the National Natural Disasters Monitoring and Warning Center (Cemaden), There is no scientific basis to support this uninhabitability thesis.In an interview with G1, the climate change PhD reminds us that the final projection of the Earth in 30 years will depend on more variables than just the temperature of the light bulb.

But on the one hand, if Raymond’s research does not suggest that Brazil will become uninhabitable, It points to a disaster scenario for the world, which is logically also valid for our country.Speaking to G1, “protector of the planet” Carlos Nobre warned that if we do not act urgently, “we will not be able to implement solutions that would prevent the country from boiling over by 2070, for example.”

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