The Middle East And North Africa are rapidly approaching the point when they will be uninhabitable for human beings because of rising temperatures linked to man-made global warming, according to a new study.  If you thought the migration of more than a million Syrian and Iraqi war refugees to Europe was major moment in history, imagine half a billion people on the move.

"In future, the climate in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa could change in such a manner that the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy," says Professor Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute and Professor at the Cyprus Institute, which have just released a study saying that the number of "very hot" days in the region have "doubled" since 1970. 

The report says that by the middle of this century, the hottest days of summer would "not fall below 30 degrees at night, and during daytime they could rise to 46 degrees Celsius".  Heat waves would last longer as well.  Today, the region averages 16 extremely hot days per year, but daily high temperatures in excess of 50 C degrees are in store.

"If mankind continues to release carbon dioxide as it does now, people living in the Middle East and North Africa will have to expect about 200 unusually hot days, according to the model projections," says Cyprus Institute climate change expert Associate Professor Panos Hadjinicolaou.

The report compares two models:  The first is "business as usual" which assumes nothing is done to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions which cause global warming.  But even if the world gets its act together and limits global warming to an average of 2 degrees over pre-industrial levels - as agreed to in last year's Paris Climate Accord - the region in question is still in trouble.  Dust in the atmosphere over Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria is already 70 percent higher than the start of this century.  This is mainly attributable to an increase of sand storms as a result of prolonged droughts.  The report forecasts that climate change will contribute to further increases, which will worsen environmental conditions in the area.

Last year, a study predicted that climate-prompted changes would render parts of the Middle East uninhabitable by the end of the century.  The new research from the Max Planck and Cyprus Institutes significantly moves up that time table.