Anna Bawden
Tue 29 October 2024
Impact of a drought in Spain in March 2023. Higher temperatures mean 151m more people faced moderate or severe food insecurity that year.Photograph: Paola de Grenet/The Guardian
Heat-related deaths, food insecurity and the spread of infectious diseases caused by the climate crisis have reached record levels, according to a landmark report.
The Lancet Countdown’s ninth report on health and the climate breakdown reveals that people across the world face unprecedented threats to their health from the rapidly changing climate.
“This year’s stocktake of the imminent health threats of climate inaction reveals the most concerning findings yet,” warned Dr Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London.
“Once again, last year broke climate change records with extreme heatwaves, deadly weather events, and devastating wildfires affecting people around the world. No individual or economy on the planet is immune [to] the health threats of climate change.
“The relentless expansion of fossil fuels and record-breaking greenhouse gas emissions compounds these dangerous health impacts, and is threatening to reverse the limited progress made so far and put a healthy future further out of reach.”
The report finds that in 2023, extreme drought lasting at least one month affected 48% of the global land area, while people had to cope with an unprecedented 50 more days of health-threatening temperatures than would have been expected without the climate crisis. As a result, 151 million more people faced moderate or severe food insecurity, risking malnutrition and other harm to their health.
Heat related deaths among the over-65s rocketed by 167% in 2023, compared with the 1990s. Without the climate crisis, an ageing global population means such deaths would have increased, but only by 65%. High temperatures also led to a record 6% more hours of lost sleep in 2023 than the 1986–2005 average. Poor sleep has a profound negative effect on physical and mental health.
Hotter and drier weather saw greater numbers of sand and dust storms, which contributed to a 31% increase in the number of people exposed to dangerously high particulate matter concentrations, while life-threatening diseases such as dengue, malaria and West Nile virus continue to spread into new areas as a result of higher temperatures.
But despite this, “governments and companies continue to invest in fossil fuels, resulting in all-time high greenhouse gas emissions and staggering tree loss, reducing the survival chances of people all around the globe”, the authors found.
In 2023, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions reached an all-time high, 1.1% above 2022, and the proportion of fossil fuels in the global energy system increased for the first time in a decade during 2021, reaching 80.3% of all energy.
Responding to the findings, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said: “The climate crisis is a health crisis. As the planet heats up, the frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters increase, leaving no region untouched.”
The report makes it clear, he added, that “climate change is not a distant threat, but an immediate risk to health”.
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said: “Record-high emissions are posing record-breaking threats to our health. We must cure the sickness of climate inaction – by slashing emissions, protecting people from climate extremes, and ending our fossil fuel addiction – to create a fairer, safer and healthier future for all.”
Temperate countries are also seeing the effects of the climate crisis. In 2013-2022, the UK’s overall mean increase in heat-related deaths was estimated at nine deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, while there were 8.5 million potential working hours lost due to heat exposure in 2023.
Dr Lea Berrang Ford, head of the Centre for Climate and Health Security at the UK Health Security Agency, which published its own report on the health impacts of global heating on the UK, said: “Climate change is not solely a future health threat. Health impacts are already being felt domestically and globally, and these risks will accelerate.
“There are significant opportunities for win-win solutions that can combat climate change and improve health. The health decisions we make today will determine the severity and extent of climate impacts inherited by today’s youth and their children.”
Dr Josh Foster, lecturer in human environmental physiology at King’s College London, said the report’s “alarming” trends would “result in more frequent mass mortality events in older people as the devastating impacts of climate change are realised”.
Climate change driving 'record threats to health': report
Daniel Lawler
Tue 29 October 2024
The world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters (Sylvie HUSSON) (Sylvie HUSSON/AFP/AFP)
Climate change poses a growing threat to human health in a variety of record-breaking ways, a major report said Wednesday, the experts warning that "wasted time has been paid in lives".
The new report was released as heatwaves, fires, hurricanes, droughts and floods have lashed the world during what is expected to surpass 2023 to become the hottest year on record.
It also comes just weeks before the United Nations COP29 talks are held in Azerbaijan -- and days before a US election that could see climate change sceptic Donald Trump return to the White House.
The eighth Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, developed by 122 experts including from UN agencies such as the World Health Organization, painted a dire picture of death and delay.
Out of 15 indicators that the experts have been tracking over the last eight years, 10 have "reached concerning new records," the report said.
These included the increasing extreme weather events, elderly deaths from heat, spread of infectious diseases, and people going without food as droughts and floods hit crops.
Lancet Countdown executive director Marina Romanello told AFP the report showed there are "record threats to the health and survival of people in every country, to levels we have never seen before".
- 'Fuelling the fire' -
The number of over-65s who died from heat has risen by 167 percent since the 1990s, the report said.
Rising temperatures have also increased the area where mosquitoes roam, taking deadly diseases with them.
Last year saw a new record of over five million cases of dengue worldwide, the report noted.
Around five percent of the world's tree cover was destroyed between 2016 and 2022, reducing Earth's capacity to capture the carbon dioxide humans are emitting.
It also tracked how oil and gas companies -- as well as some governments and banks -- were "fuelling the fire" of climate change.
Despite decades of warnings, global emissions of the main greenhouse gases rose again last year, the World Meteorological Organization said earlier this week.
Large oil and gas companies, which have been posting record profits, have increased fossil fuel production since last year, the report said.
Many countries also handed out fresh subsidies to fossil fuels to counteract soaring oil and gas prices after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Fossil fuel subsidies amounted to $1.4 trillion in 2022, which is "vastly more than any source of commitments to enable a transition to a healthier future," Romanello said.
- 'No more time to waste' -
But there were also "some very encouraging signs of progress," she added.
For example, deaths from fossil fuel-related air pollution fell by nearly seven percent to 2.10 million from 2016 to 2021, mainly due to efforts to reduce pollution from burning coal, the report said.
The share of clean renewables used to generate electricity nearly doubled over the same period to 10.5 percent, it added.
And there are signs that climate negotiations are paying more attention to health, Romanello said, pointing to the COP talks and national climate plans to be submitted early next year.
"If action is not taken today, the future will be very dangerous," she warned.
"There is really no more time to waste -- I know we have been saying this for many years -- but what we are seeing is that the wasted time has been paid in lives."
For people at home, Romanello advised a climate-friendly diet, travelling without burning dirty energy, ditching banks that invest in fossil fuels and voting for politicians promising greater action on global warming.
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Climate crisis caused half of 2022 European heat deaths, study finds
Maryam Kara
Tue 29 October 2024
(AFP/Getty Images)
More than half of the 68,000 heat-related deaths during the scorching European summer in 2022 were caused by climate change, a study has found.
Researchers from Barcelona Institute for Global Health revealed human-induced climate change, brought on by the burning of fossil fuels and destruction of nature, may have resulted in 38,000 more deaths in 2022.
It was the year that saw the hottest summer on record and a death toll about 10 times greater than the number of homicides in Europe during the whole year.
Warm weather had killed more women than men, more southern Europeans than northern Europeans, and more individuals over the age of 64 in comparison to those who were younger.
While scientists have previously established a link between carbon pollution and hotter heatwaves, they were unaware of how much carbon pollution had driven up the death toll.
It has now been revealed the generally higher vulnerability of these groups was exacerbated by anthropogenic warming, and the clogging of the atmosphere by greenhouse pollutants.
To estimate how many more people die as a result of hot weather, an existing heat and health data model for 35 European countries was examined alongside temperatures for a hypothetical world in which humans had not heated the planet.
Researchers concluded climate change was behind 22,501 heat deaths in women and 14,026 heat deaths in men, but also highlighted human-induced climate change has exacerbated the heat-related mortality during other exceptionally hot summers.
During 2015–2021, between 44 per cent and 54 per cent of summer heat-related mortality can be attributed to anthropogenic warming.
The study’s lead authors have warned that without mitigation action to combat heat-related deaths, the mortality rate is also “likely to speed up” in the near future.
They said: “Our study urgently calls for national governments and agencies in Europe to increase the ambition and effectiveness of heat surveillance and prevention measures, new adaptation strategies, and global mitigation efforts.”
More than half of European heat-related deaths in summer 2022 attributed to anthropogenic warming
The results of the study show a higher number of heat-related deaths attributed to climate change among women and people aged 80 and over
Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
The unprecedented temperatures in the summer of 2022 caused more than 68,000 deaths on the continent, according to a study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the 'la Caixa' Foundation. A new study has now found that more than half - 56% - of the heat-related deaths in the summer of 2022 were related to human-induced climate change. According to the research, 38,154 of the 68,593 heat-related deaths in the summer of 2022 would not have occurred without anthropogenic warming.
The starting point was previous research in which, using temperature and mortality records from 35 European countries, epidemiological models were fitted to estimate heat-related mortality in the summer 2022. Using a dataset of global mean surface temperature anomalies between 1880 and 2022, they estimated the increase in temperatures due to anthropogenic warming for every region. They then subtracted those increases from the recorded temperatures to obtain an estimate of what temperatures would have been in the absence of anthropogenic warming. Finally, using the model developed in the first study, they estimated mortality for a hypothetical scenario where those temperatures would have occurred.
The results, published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, showed that the number of heat-related deaths per million inhabitants attributed to anthropogenic warming was twice as high in the Southern regions compared to the rest of Europe.
In line with previous studies, the team found a higher number of heat-related deaths attributed to climate change among women (22,501 out of 37,983 deaths) and people aged 80 years or more (23,881 out of 38,978 deaths) as opposed to men (14,026 out of 25,385 deaths) and people aged 64 years or less (2,702 out of 5,565 deaths).
“This study sheds light on the extent to which global warming impacts public health. While we observe an increase of heat-related mortality across nearly all the countries analysed, not everyone is affected equally, with women and the elderly particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of rising temperatures,” says Thessa Beck, ISGlobal researcher, and the study's first author.
Urgent need for ambitious adaptation and mitigation measures
Temperatures in Europe are rising twice as fast as the global average, exacerbating health impacts. But climate change has not only exacerbated heat-related mortality in exceptionally hot summers as in 2022. According to the study's findings, between 44% and 54% of heat-related summer mortality between 2015 and 2021 can be attributed to global warming. In absolute terms, this corresponds to an annual burden of between 19,000 and 28,000 deaths. By comparison, the figures for 2022 show an alarming 40% increase in heat-related mortality and a two-thirds increase in mortality attributed to anthropogenic warming.
“Our study urgently calls on governments and national authorities in Europe to increase the ambition and effectiveness of surveillance and prevention measures, new adaptation strategies, and global mitigation efforts. Without strong action, record temperatures and heat-related mortality will continue to rise in the coming years,” says Joan Ballester Claramunt, Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant EARLY-ADAPT (https://www.early-adapt.eu/).
Reference
Beck TM, Schumacher DL, Achebak H, Vicedo-Cabrera AM, Seneviratne SI, Ballester J. Mortality burden attributed to anthropogenic warming during Europe’s 2022 record-breaking summer. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. Oct. 2024. Doi: 10.1038/s41612-024-00783-2
Journal
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Mortality burden attributed to anthropogenic warming during Europe’s 2022 record-breaking summer
Article Publication Date
29-Oct-2024
