Urban deadly heat and global inequality

Anthropogenic climate change leads to more extreme heat in most regions around the world, in greater magnitude and longer durations. With a global perspective in mind, we explore equity impacts of physiologically deadly heat in cities. In a warming climate, heat extremes reaching a physiological threshold is a phenomena predominantly affecting regions closer to the equator, in contrast to heatwaves defined as a deviation from the mean which appear more frequently in all parts of the world. Many of the regions hit by deadly heat are also vulnerable from factors such as economic challenges, or other climate hazards posing fundamental threats to societal stability and livability.
We here quantitatively explore the intersection of socio-economic variables with previously described occurence of deadly heat in urban environments. These variables include current and future GDP estimates, Gini coefficients and population dynamics. We use metrics of inequality borrowed from economics. We intersect global deadly heat in future climate scenarios with urbanization dynamics. Sub-Saharan Africa stands out as a region where both trends are pronounced. We also demonstrate that countries with responsibility for high historic emissions are overall less affected by the extreme heat.
The insights provided by this research contribute to an improved general understanding of global inequality and climate change as a driver of these. They further contribute to the loss and damage discussion.