After 2024 Hajj disaster, has climate change made summer pilgrimages to Mecca impossible?

The annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia is a rite of passage for Muslims worldwide, one of the Five Pillars of Islam and a trip they must make at least once in their lifetime if able to. 

However, for thousands of Muslims this year, the Hajj became a death sentence. 

Saudi Health Minister Fahad Al-Jalajel announced on June 23 that 1,301 pilgrims had died while performing the Hajj, which lasted from June 14 to June 19.

Al-Jalajel noted that 83 percent of the deceased had avoided seeking authorisation from Saudi authorities to undertake the Hajj.

The cost of a government-recognised Hajj package can be as much as $10,000, forcing many poorer Muslims to rely on cheap, illicit travel agencies that eschew the proper documentation and neglect to provide adequate support for Mecca’s sometimes-brutal climate.

Pilgrims who took this route often found themselves in sweltering accommodations, forced to walk portions of the Hajj that other pilgrims drove in air-conditioned vans.

In a gathering of this scale — 1.8 million pilgrims travelled to Mecca for the Hajj this year, many of them elderly — some deaths from natural causes and the like are inevitable.

But the ultimate culprit behind this tragedy was the heat.

The temperature broke 51°C, with many of the Hajj’s activities taking place outdoors. The 400,000 unsanctioned pilgrims, left to fend for themselves, were at a particular risk.

Al-Jalajel attributed many of the deaths to “walking long distances under direct sunlight without adequate shelter or comfort.”

Saudi Arabia’s experts had been hinting at the possibility of a catastrophe in advance of the Hajj: a study by government-affiliated Saudi doctors published in March of this year highlighted “the escalating climate-related health risks in Mecca” for Hajj pilgrims and recommended “refining public health interventions in the face of rising temperatures.”

“Intriguingly, our data suggest that the intensifying heat may be outpacing current mitigation efforts, signalling a need to recalibrate existing approaches,” the authors of the study wrote.

The study found that Mecca’s average air temperature had increased by 0.4°C every decade going back to the 1980s. Because the dates of the Hajj move earlier each year, the authors of the study broke periods down into “hot cycles” and “cold cycles,” with hot cycles covering when the Hajj falls between May and September.

The hottest air temperature recorded during the study was 48.7°C on July 13, 1989 — several degrees below this year’s heat wave.

Foreign scientists pointed to the role of global warming in this tragedy.

The Climate Shift Index, a tool created by the American research group Climate Central, found that “climate change had made the conditions at least five times more likely” for Mecca’s mid-June heat wave.

Another analysis by the Paris-based research group ClimaMeter attributed the deadly heat to global warming and suggested that “human-driven climate change” had led to a 2.5°C increase from what temperatures in Mecca might have been otherwise.

Even as attention focuses on Mecca and the Hajj, Saudi Arabia as a whole has been suffering year-round for decades.

A 2021 study published by the American Meteorological Society reported startling findings: “Saudi Arabia has warmed up at a rate that is 50% higher than the rest of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere.

"Moreover, the moisture content of the air has significantly increased in the region. The increases of temperature and humidity have resulted in the soaring of dew point temperature and thermal discomfort across the country.”

The authors reached a portentous conclusion: “These increases are more substantial during summers, which are already very hot relative to winters. Such changes may be dangerous to people over vast areas of the country.

"If the current trend persists into the future, human survival in the region will be impossible without continuous access to air conditioning.”

These challenges will only grow in the years to come. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a leading Saudi academic institution better known as KAUST, has warned that “temperatures in the Arabian Peninsula could rise by 5.6°C by the end of the century,” compared to a worldwide average increase of 3°C by 2100.

Saudi Arabia’s neighbours are grappling with the same problem, sometimes on a larger scale.

One 2023 study predicted that the majority of the populations of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates would face extreme heat if temperatures rose 2.7°C by 2070; Qatar’s entire population would be facing relentless heat waves in this scenario.

Some experts have fretted that the Arabian Peninsula “could become uninhabitable” in the next 50 years.

While these developments may seem unsurprising in a region long counted as one of the hottest in the world, the impact of climate change on Saudi Arabia will reverberate among Muslim communities across the globe.

The dead at the Hajj this year included Americans, Indians, and Indonesians. The staggering international death toll led Human Rights Watch to emphasise Saudi Arabia’s “obligation to protect people’s health from known hazards like extreme heat.”

The human rights group called on Saudi authorities “to do more to address this major public health risk,” observing that “next year’s Hajj, too, will occur during the summer.”

Yet Saudi officials have hardly been asleep at the wheel. Even as Saudi Arabia has continued pumping the fossil fuels responsible for climate change — and lobbied against the international community’s efforts to transition away from them — the kingdom recognises the risks of global warming and has been investing in climate change mitigation.

Saudi Arabia’s embassy in the United States notes on its website that, as part of “preparing for the guests of God” who subsume Mecca during the Hajj, the kingdom readies “millions of containers of chilled water” and an installation of “sprinklers placed atop 30-foot poles and spaced some 50 feet apart, which spread a fine mist of water to provide coolness.”

Ambulances and even helicopters ferry pilgrims in need of medical attention to hospitals. This year, Saudi officials also urged pilgrims to stay hydrated, minimise time outdoors, and keep in mind that they had no obligation to walk to the Great Mosque of Mecca for every prayer.

Though the measures likely saved countless lives, the number of deaths indicates that these steps are far from enough.

At the same time, there is confusion about what else to do. The Saudi doctors behind the March 2024 study recommended that their government offer “advice on staying hydrated in such settings, staying indoors during the hottest times of the day, seeking shaded areas whenever possible and cooling down in air-conditioned locations.”

Yet the study itself observed that Saudi authorities had already been implementing these measures, for years in some cases. Saudi Arabia may benefit most not from expanding amenities like air conditioning, but from ensuring that they are available to every pilgrim.

The unregistered pilgrims who accounted for the majority of the deaths had less reliable access to air-conditioned quarters and other heat-mitigating resources than their counterparts who could afford to pay full price for a Hajj package.

By taking steps to create a more egalitarian Hajj experience — in keeping with the spirit of the Hajj itself — Saudi Arabia can avoid excess deaths and more disastrous headlines.

And every source says that the Hajj will only grow hotter in the coming years, so Saudi authorities need to get started as soon as possible.