The Iraqi city of Nasiriyah has clocked the world’s highest temperature in the last day reaching a scorching 48.7°C (119.7°F), according to data from the American Placerville station. The Nasiriyah News Network reported that the Placerville station’s data showed that there are 15 cities worldwide registering extremely high temperatures due to climate change.

Nasiriyah was top of the list, followed by another Iraqi city, Basra, which recorded 48°C (118.4°F).

Already prone to high temperatures, climate change is expected to have a disastrous effect on the Middle East. Syria’s drought 15 years ago led to a violent civil war that has left millions of people refugees –– people who now continue to seek refugee status in countries such as Canada and in Europe.

Iraq, home to the Euphrates River, and the ancestral birthplace of Abraham, has been experiencing more frequent heatwaves in recent years. Neighbors Iran and Kuwait also record record temperatures. A heatwave in Saudi Arabia this year in Mecca turned tragic when more than1,300 died from heat exhaustion –– tour companies took advantage of lax visa requirements, which led to overcrowding making the heat wave intolerable.

Local authorities have not yet commented on any measures being taken in Iraq to address this extreme weather event or how they will protect people. Iraq is asking people to turn down their air conditioners as not to strain the electricity grid.

TotalEnergies are looking to build a solar power plant in the Basra area.

Iraq’s state-run power company Tavanir reported on August 8, electricity consumption peaked at 79,872 MW – about 10% higher than the same period last year — and that brown and blackouts would face the nation.

One weather station in the south of the country reached a heat index of 82.2°C (180°F) and a dew point of 36.1°C (97°F), which might be the highest such readings ever recorded on Planet Earth. Welcome to our new reality.

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With a special interest in the Middle East, after studying Arabic and also teaching dance to underprivileged children in Jordan, I was touched when I learned about Joudeh. Then around this time last year, in rehearsals for a modern dance show, I found out that one of the pieces I would perform centered around him. An excerpt from the documentary that introduced Joudeh to the world would play on the screen at the back of the stage. This good fortune moved me; I felt so lucky and eager to embrace his “Dance or die” spirit, to embody his movement, to give his story the spotlight it deserves – this time on a New York City stage.

In his documentary, there was one scene in which Joudeh dances on a barren concrete rooftop. It’s a beautiful day, a minaret and dome of a mosque visible beyond the roof’s border, but one inevitably fears that there isn’t much time before all of the structures pictured will crumble, the dust will block out the sun…

Joudeh ushers in a sense of hope to that roof, though, as he sweeps his leg around, tumbles to the floor but then reaches an outstretched hand to the sky. His movement is big; you can tell that he needs this art as much as it sustains him.

I, too, like to move big, and I know I dance better when I am emotionally charged. In this piece by the company Born Dancing, Inc., called Grey 5 because it was the fifth of a set of pieces dedicated to Syria, collectively called Grey, I started mimicking Joudeh’s movement pattern, dancing with him as I faced the back, looking at him on the screen. Three dancers joined and we danced in canon, and then it was complete accumulation: all six of us were flying and reaching alongside Ahmad Joudeh.

View the video on Facebook here.

The piece ended with pictures of Syrian children affected by the war flashing over the screen, and the dancers reacting to it. I remember that the director, Melissa van Wijk, did not choreograph our reactions; she let us feel the way we felt, and manifest that through movement, whatever it was. I appreciated that freedom awarded us, when usually dance is so exacting.

On the subject of freedom, I would like to give an update on Joudeh’s whereabouts. He is now dancing with the Dutch National Ballet. No doubt his technique and artistry have soared, and his future dance students will be all the more lucky to have him. Last month his first book, an autobiography, called Danza o Muori, Italian for Dance or Die, was published by DeA Planeta Libri. I have to brush up on my Italian, and then I’ll pick up a copy.

Tonight is opening night of Born Dancing, Inc.’s fourth production. Although we will not be showing all of Grey, and that means no Grey 5, there is a duet, Grey 2, that we have pulled to show, and I have the honor of dancing in it. I assume the role of a mother figure as I dance with an 11-year-old named Emily, who represents Syrian refugee children at large. We play, I support her, she supports me, and love is palpable.

This weekend, I bet Ahmad Joudeh is performing, too. Although we won’t be sharing the stage in person or thanks to digital technology, we will still be close: I plan to carry his love of dance in my heart, and that’s as close at it gets.

First photo courtesy of Born Dancing, Inc. Photo of Danza o Muori taken off Ahmad Joudeh’s Instagram page.

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The Svalbard Global seed bank was established in February 2008. It was designed to store seeds for hundreds or even thousands of years in the event of a global disaster. But now, only seven years later, the Syrian civil war made it necessary to withdraw seeds from this doomsday vault.

Svalbard Norway: It would have been easy to imagine the end of the world here surrounded by glaciers, polar bears and the long dark winters of the high arctic. But like Noah’s ark, the global seed bank was designed to preserve life.

Related: The Noah’s Ark Seed Bank for Coral Reefs

The blueprint for Noah’s Coral Ark

Specifically it was designed to preserve the seeds necessary for our food crops and our survival. The doomsday vault is located deep within an ice-covered mountain on Spitzbergen Island, far above the expected sea level rise in centuries of climate change and only 800 miles from the North Pole.

Even if the vault’s electrical power supply is interrupted,the vault won’t thaw for hundreds of years. The vault is designed to survive a missile attack or even a nuclear war. The preserved seeds will also protect us against the possibility that GMO crops damage the gene pool of the global food supply, or create an unsustainable plant monoculture.

The doomsday vault designers thought of nearly everything, With each year the seed bank grew more and more deposits from around the world until it reached nearly 865,000 varieties of seeds. Some of these seeds were from the International Center for Agricultural research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) which was located in Aleppo, Syria.

The Syrian war forced ICARDA to move to Beirut, Lebanon. Some of the seeds were lost or destroyed before or during the move, so now, only seven years after the seeds were deposited, the first withdrawal is being made to replace the seeds destroyed in Syria’s civil war.

A spokesperson for the seedbank said that while withdrawing seeds from a doomsday vault appears to be very bad news, it actually shows that the vault works and is a valuable resource for our violent and troubled world.

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The prefab homes were a huge hit when they were unveiled earlier this year – blogs all across the globe picked up the story.

Designed as an alternative to tents currently used to shelter refugees, IKEA and the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) put three years and $4.6 million into developing them.

Sturdy but relatively lightweight, they come with a small solar panel, and are easily transported when disassembled in under four hours.

They aren’t cheap – each costs $7,500 – but they do provide a great deal more protection from the elements than existing solutions.

That might seem like a good thing, but the Lebanese government is concerned that these steel-framed homes will be too cozy for the refugees, who might then be inclined to overstay their welcome.

After more than 500,000 Palestinian refugees fled to Lebanon in 1948 and never left, the government is leery to encourage the roughly one million Syrian refugees to make the country their permanent home.

As it stands, the refugees who poured into Lebanon to escape the violence in Syria already make up 25 percent of the latter’s population, which puts a huge strain on the country’s infrastructure.

“In Lebanon the government has been reluctant to set up any structure that has any resemblance of permanence,” Roberta Russo, UNHCR’s Beirut-based spokesperson, told TIME Magazine.

“After what they went through with the Palestinians, they want to make sure the presence of Syrians is temporary.”

Still, after six months of negotiating, the government has agreed to at least allow a trial run. But this won’t result in any significant changes for the refugees any time soon.

Jean-Marie Garelli, UNHCR’s program director for the Syrian refugees told TIME that the government’s receptivity is positive. “However it will take some time to put these shelters in place. You won’t see a miracle in a week.”

In the meantime, severe cold, rain and snow make conditions intolerable for refugees. Over the weekend, camps were flooded, and the emergency kits distributed by aid agencies are scarcely sufficient to keep people warm.

Refugees in Jordan aren’t faring any better.

:: TIME Magazine

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