Baghdad is already pretty hot. And it’s likely to get even hotter.

A report from the European Union Institute of Security Studies projects that the number of days when temperatures in Baghdad hit 120 degrees will go from roughly 14 per year to more than 40 over the next two decades.

The study forecasts that the Iraqi capital, which is already seeing longer heat waves each summer and higher peak temperatures, will be one of the places hardest hit by global warming.

Baghdad set a new record high of 125.2 degrees on July 28, 2020. The next day it cooled down to 124.

In summer the Baghdad city government now regularly declares “heat holidays” ordering residents to stay home.

“When it gets to 50 degrees (122 Fahrenheit) we already stay at home,” says 70-year-old Razak Abdul-Zahra Mubarak, one of dozens of street vendors in Al Maidan square in Baghdad. “We don’t need the government to tell us to get out of the sun … when it gets like that.”

Al Maidan square in Baghdad is essentially an outdoor flea market. On the dusty sidewalk and even in the concrete median of the street, Mubarak and other vendors hawk used clothes, fake designer watches, knives, computer parts … just about anything.

Mubarak sits under a faded beach umbrella in front of secondhand shoes he’s trying to sell. “Each year it’s getting hotter and hotter,” he says. “There is no rain. And even the winter has become very short.” He says he used to only bring out his beach umbrella in the summer but now uses it all year long.