Today’s children are waiting for an unprecedented life. Will experience extremely warm, floods and crop

Today’s and unborn children must be prepared for their world to be much more extreme than the world of their grandparents. Extreme heat, dry, fires or floods will experience much more often.

With current climatic measures, the world is directed to warming by 2.7 degrees by the end of the 21st century compared to temperatures before the industrial revolution.

With such warming, up to one hundred million children born in 2020 will face unprecedented heats. This represents 83 percent of today’s five -year -olds, as in 2020 they were born in the world about 120 million.

The good news is that much of them can be protected from these extremes. However, the world would have to connect, tighten its climatic goals and keep warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.

Authors of a new study in Nature magazine They appeal to the world leaders to join and save the world for contemporary and future generations of children.

Unprecedented life

Scientists in their research work with an unprecedented or unprecedented life – this is one in which someone will experience an climate extreme that would be extremely rare without climate change, with a probability of only 1 to 10,000.

In addition to extreme heat, today’s children must prepare for being more often than their parents and grandparents to experience crop, floods, tropical cyclones, dry and fires.

New research, however, shows that in the « only » warming scenario by 1.5 degrees the world could protect 38 million children from today’s five -year -olds from unprecedented heat. And eight million before a crop or five million in front of river floods.

If we spread this analysis to all children who now have between five and eighteen years, up to 645 million children would be protected compared to 1.5 billion that would experience extremes the weather With even higher warming of 3.5 degrees Celsius.

These almost unimaginably large numbers only emphasize the need for a fast and complete diversion from fossil fuels whose combustion contributes to the formation of greenhouse gases.

Children to the forefront

A healthy adult is perhaps the best equipped to handle different climatic extremes. The most vulnerable groups are disadvantaged, seniors and children.

For example, it is very difficult for children’s bodies to be extremely warm. In the worst cases, they can lead to overheating and may also be fatal.

What he is the child smaller, thereby the heat threatens more. This is due to thermoregulation, which is still developing in the first years of life.

Children from excluded communities and poor parts of the world will suffer most.

Already today’s climatic extremes affect their lives. They are forced to leave their home, lose food or cannot go to schools.

For example, 16-year-old Haruka from Vanuatu has experienced three strong cyclones in the last year. Every year they destroy her home and parents no longer try to repair the destroyed ceiling, explains in the press release of Save The Children.

« In recent years, I have seen constant destruction and constant renewal. This seemingly endless cycle has become our reality and most people do not even realize that it is not just a nature that is doing its own, but that it is we who bear the main burden of the crisis they have not caused, » says Haruka.

« This new research shows that there is still hope, but only if we act immediately and ambitiously to quickly limit warming to 1.5 ° C and actually put children at the forefront of our climate change at all levels, » explains Save The Childre’s press release.

In addition to restricting the use, subsidization and financing of fossil fuels, the organization recommends leaders to set up new financial schemes to combat climate change, which will be emphasized by children, especially the most at risk. At the same time, leaders should give children, their rights and unique needs to the headquarters of climate plans and agreements.

We threaten the future of children

The results of the study on endangered children calculated on the basis of population forecasts, life expectancy data and climate modeling. In this way, they calculated the likelihood of climate extremes for different generations.

Children born in 2020 will experience up to seven times more climatic extremes than people born in 1960.

For example, about sixteen percent of people born in 1960 faced the risk that they would experience extreme heat during their lifetime. For children born in 2020, this risk is 52 percent of them in the most optimistic scenario with a warming of 1.5 degrees.

This indicates that climate change It will affect not only the health of children of contemporary and future generations, but also the socio -economic and demographic composition of the population.

Indirectly, climate change also affects the earnings of the estimated life expectancy of mortality. In this way, it can significantly change the composition of the population, especially in the most endangered countries, recalls in the commentary for Nature Rosanna Gualdi and Raya Muttarak.

By ignoring the results of this study, “we endanger the future of our children”, they add.

DOI: 10.1038/S41586-025-08907-1