Extreme Heat to Intensify, Yet Israel Cuts Budgets for Climate Adaptation
Israel is identified as a climate change hotspot, with the region warming faster than the global average. Despite the rising frequency of extreme weather events, government funding for climate adaptation is being reduced.
As the weekend proved, climate change does not skip Israel. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines the Mediterranean as a climate change hotspot: the region is warming faster than the global average, with the expected warming for the 21st century ranging between 3.5 and 9 degrees Celsius.
A combination of increasing summer heat and dryness, along with decreasing precipitation, creates fertile ground for the spread of fires. According to a report by the Meteorological Service, between 1951 and 2020, the number of days per year with high potential for fire spread increased by a factor of 3. Israel is warming at a rate of about 0.5–0.6 degrees Celsius per decade, and by the end of the century, warming could reach 4–5 degrees in the interior and mountainous regions, and about 3–3.5 degrees on the coast and in the lowlands.
According to the Meteorological Service, in the second half of the century, extreme heat loads will become the norm in almost all of Israel. In Tel Aviv, a heavy heat load that currently prevails for about 10% of the summer is expected to prevail for about 70% of the time by the end of the century. In Beersheba, the frequency will jump from 10% to 50%, and in Eilat from about 40% to 90%. Summers of 50 degrees Celsius may arrive sooner than expected, and events that were previously recorded once every hundred years could recur every two years.
Already today, the number of days with temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius or higher in Gush Dan has jumped more than 5 times since the sixties, from 20 days a year to 109 in 2024. According to a preliminary estimate by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (from 2022), every heatwave in Israel leads to excess mortality of about 45 people on average. An increase in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves means an increasing burden on the healthcare system.
While European cities are investing billions of euros in preparing for climate change, in Israel, preventive budgets have actually been reduced. Minister of Environmental Protection Idit Silman gave up about 200 million shekels from her ministry's climate budget, the national program for urban cooling and shading has not been funded for the last two years, and budgets in this field are only being eroded.
