NOAA: Hot and Wet Climate Could Slash Work Productivity by 10 Percent

Global warming may not just cause sea level rise, droughts and heat waves. It could also have a profound impact on the way we work and live our daily lives. New research shows that worker productivity will slow due to extreme and enduring heat stress if the warming trend continues.

Since warmer air can hold more moisture than cooler air, there is more humidity in the air than their used to be. Muggy, hot summers are the norm, and  can be stressful on workers. In order to calculate this stress, though, experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looked at military and industrial guidelines currently in place for heat stress. They then set those guidelines against climate projections for how hot and humid our climate is expected to become over the next century.

The NOAA's findings showed that global warming could play a huge role in the economy. They projected that heat stress-related labor capacity losses could double globally by 2050 with a warming climate. Since work capability is already down to 90 percent during the hottest and most humid periods, further warming could make it drop to 80 percent by 2050--a total decrease of 10 percent. By 2200, a worst case scenario could cause levels to drop to under 40 percent.

The areas where humidity and heat are already a problem would be the worst off, according to the study. Labor capacity would be all but eliminated in the lower Mississippi Valley. The rest of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains would be exposed to heat stress beyond anything currently seen today, according to one of the study authors.

Even New York City wouldn't be safe. The authors calculate that the heat stress in the metropolitan area would exceed that of present-day Bahrain, and Bahrain could experience heat and humidity which could cause hyperthermia, dangerous overheating, even in sleeping individuals.

So what can we do? Researchers suggest that we limit global warming to less than 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius). That way, labor capacity can be maintained.

"The problem is that one individual may not necessarily notice if the risk of heat stress makes him or her one percent less productive," said Solomon Hsiang, who published a paper in 2010 that raised questions about the impact of global heat stress, in an interview with HealthDay. "But if you make a billion people 1 percent less productive, that will have a huge global impact."

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.