Europe was gripped by punishing heat waves in the summer of 2022, with wildfires, droughts and deaths highlighting what many around the world already know: Weather extremes can have devastating, real-world consequences.
When it comes to temperatures in warmer months, the direction of travel seems to be going one way.
The U.K.’s Met Office is projecting that summers in the country will be between 1 and 6 degrees Celsius warmer by 2070, and as much as 60% drier. It adds that global heat waves linked to climate change are likely to increase. Just this week it said last month was the U.K.’s hottest June on record.
The overall picture is challenging. In May 2023, the World Meteorological Organization said there’s “a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.”
The consequences of a warmer planet are going to be multifaceted, affecting billions of people — and the world of work is no exception.
A recent report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) sketched out how employees could be affected as temperatures rise.
“Thermal comfort is very important in a workplace and if it is not achieved, morale, productivity, health and safety will all likely deteriorate,” the analysis said.
According to those involved in the report’s production, warmer working environments can create some very challenging scenarios indeed.
“There’s a whole range of things in addition to just people becoming fatigued and exhausted and not being able to focus on the industrial tasks they’re trying to undertake,” Tim Fox, its lead author, told CNBC.
That includes “increased potential for accidents, because people’s cognitive thinking isn’t as sharp as it would normally be.”
Issues relating to productivity also apply to equipment, facilities and buildings, Fox said. “Overheating ultimately results in economic productivity loss, [it] impacts on national and international economics.”
Sectors bearing the brunt
Fox and his co-authors are not alone in highlighting the difficulties of a hotter world.
In 2019, the International Labour Organization published a report which contained some sobering details.
“The economic losses due to heat stress at work were estimated at US$280 billion in 1995,” the U.N. agency said.
This, it added, “is projected to increase to US$2,400 billion in 2030, with the impact of heat stress being most pronounced in lower-middle- and low-income countries.”
The ILO’s report also highlighted which sectors would likely bear the brunt of rising average temperatures.
Workers in Italy picking grapes, August 2022. People who work outdoors are expected to be significantly affected by rising average temperatures.
Marco Bertorello | AFP | Getty Images
Those working in construction and agriculture, it said, were “expected to be the worst affected, accounting for 60 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively, of working hours lost to heat stress in…
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