AEMET Backs NASA Warning That Some Cities Could Become Uninhabitable by 2050
Spain's state meteorological agency endorses NASA projections that extreme wet-bulb temperatures could render parts of southern Asia, the Persian Gulf, and southern Europe — including Spain — unlivable within decades if emissions are not cut.
Spain's State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) has endorsed NASA's long-running projections that some cities and regions around the world could become uninhabitable within the next three decades because of extreme heat, and it is urging preparation for a reality that until recently seemed distant. As part of the Mediterranean basin, Spain sits directly in the path of that scenario.
The warnings rest on a specific measure: wet-bulb temperature, which combines heat with humidity and reflects the actual thermal stress on the human body more accurately than air temperature alone. When wet-bulb temperature stays above 35 degrees Celsius, the body can no longer cool itself through sweating, a condition that can be fatal even to healthy people within hours.
According to NASA's climate models, certain regions could regularly cross that threshold before 2050. The most vulnerable areas in that timeframe include southern Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. By 2070, the problem is projected to spread to eastern China, parts of Southeast Asia, and Brazil. The United States would not escape either: Midwestern states such as Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa could reach the critical limit within the next fifty years.
For the Iberian Peninsula, the global picture translates into direct consequences. Experts warn that under a pessimistic scenario in which emissions continue to rise, the share of the planet's land surface with average temperatures above 29 degrees Celsius could grow from 0.8 percent today — concentrated mainly in the Sahara — to 19 percent by 2070. That would affect roughly 3.5 billion people, about a third of the world's population.
In the same scenario, people living in the hardest-hit regions could experience an average temperature increase of 7.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2070, more than double the projected global average warming. Such a shift would radically transform living conditions across large stretches of southern Europe, Spain included.
The intense heat waves recorded in recent summers are not isolated anomalies, according to both scientific institutions. They are an early sample of what lies ahead if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced drastically and sustainably.
AEMET agrees with NASA that the process cannot be reversed in the short term, but it can be slowed if action is taken decisively. Cutting emissions is the only real lever available to buy time. In the meantime, institutions and citizens alike will have to factor into their planning a reality that until recently seemed remote: that some areas where life now proceeds normally could cease to be habitable within decades.
Air conditioning can offer temporary relief, but experts caution that it is not a structural solution. The energy consumption it requires worsens the underlying problem. Genuine adaptation, which will have to happen sooner or later, means rethinking where and how cities are built and, in the most extreme cases, where populations will move when heat makes staying impossible.
Younger generations will live most directly with the consequences of the decisions taken — or not taken — in the coming years.
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