Climate scientists have long been warning about the carbon footprint that people are leaving on the Earth. Now a recent study is looking ahead to how climate change will in turn affect humans, saying that rising temperatures and shifting weather patterns will increase health risks.
As the number of extremely hot days per year rises, illnesses related to heat such as heat stroke and cardiac arrest will be exacerbated, according to the study.
"Nearly every place east of the Rocky Mountains will see an increase in extreme hot days in the years to come," said lead author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, as quoted by CBS News. "Urban areas like New York City and Milwaukee are expected to triple the number of extremely hot days they currently have."
The findings predict that extremely hot days will increase threefold by 2050, with Milwaukee and New York seeing three times as many 90-degree days by 2046 and Dallas experiencing days topping 100 degrees. This increase would put New York's number of intensely hot days at around 39 days compared with the current average of 13.
"Climate change is an enormous public health challenge because it affects our health through multiple pathways," Patz said in a statement. "But if the risks are so interdependent, so, too, are the opportunities."
To protect public health, air quality must be improved by reducing ozone. Other strategies are "designing sustainable cities, eating less meat, enacting better carbon policies ... and promoting active transport like walking or biking to work," said a press release.
Published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the new study came right before the United Nations climate change summit that started today in New York City. Its findings are based on studies from the past 20 years as well as data from more than 13 climate models to create temperature projections for the U.S.
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