Even if the world keeps to the Paris agreement, Australia could be battling deadly heatwaves every year in just a lifetime, new research has suggested.
An article published online in Communications Earth and Environment put forward a grim forecast about what the world might look like in 2100 - 78 years from now.
Tropical regions, including northern Australia, could be exposed to "dangerously high" heat most days of the year, while even cooler latitudes in the rest of the country would be subject to regular deadly heatwaves.
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The findings suggested that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity could drive global increases in exposure to extreme temperatures in the coming decades, even if global warming is limited to 2C, in accordance with the Paris Agreement.
The study's authors found there was an 0.1 per cent chance of keeping to the Paris target of 1.5C warming by 2100.
Heatwaves can be deadly, particularly to children, the elderly, and the unwell.
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In Australia, they have been responsible for more deaths than any other natural disaster - including bushfires, floods and cyclones.
During the 1939 Black Friday bushfires, 71 people died in Victoria, government sources show.
But at least 420 people died in the heatwaves leading up to those fires, mostly in New South Wales.
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Similarly, 173 people died during the 2009 Victorian bushfires, but an additional 374 people died in the heatwave before the fires.
The weather events also place additional pressure on hospitals and the power grid, particularly in urban areas.