Heat and Drought

In These U.S. Cities, Heat Waves Will Kill Hundreds More as Temperatures Rise

Inside Climate News 6/05/2019

The number of heat deaths becomes staggering if you try to project them out to a global scale, with hundreds of millions of people expected to be exposed to potentially deadly heat by 2050, said Dann Mitchell, a climate researcher at the University of Bristol. The challenge for doing similar studies for big cities in Asia, Africa and Middle East is lack of reliable health data.

Climate Change Has Made Droughts More Frequent Since 1900

Smithsonian 5/02/2019

Tree ring data from various parts of the world shows that greenhouse gas increases have impacted soil moisture for over 100 years

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/climate-change-has-made-droughts-more-frequent-1900-180972087/#22vZGODesffkBvis.99 Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

Unbearably Heat in India

Unbearably heat in India- Soon (Climate Change) 7/2018

An analysis of South Asia’s biggest cities found that if current warming trends continued, wet bulb temperatures — a measure of heat and humidity indicating when the body can no longer cool itself — will become so high people directly exposed for six hours or more would die.]

Higher temperatures increase suicide rates in the United States and Mexico

High Temps/Suicide Scholarly Research (Climate Change) 7/2018

Linkages between climate and mental health are often theorized but remain poorly quantified. In particular, it is unknown whether the rate of suicide, a leading cause of death globally, is systematically affected by climatic conditions. Using compre-hensive data from multiple decades for both the United States and Mexico, we find that suicide rates rise 0.7% in US counties and 2.1% in Mexican municipalities for a 1 °C increase in monthly average temperature. This effect is similar in hotter versus cooler regions and has not diminished over time, indicating limited historical adaptation. Analysis of depressive language in  > 600 million social media updates further suggests that mental well-being deteriorates during warmer periods. We project that unmitigated climate change (RCP8.5) could result in a combined 9–40 thousand additional suicides (95% confidence interval) across the United States and Mexico by 2050, representing a change in suicide rates comparable to the estimated impact of economic recessions, suicide prevention programmes or gun restriction laws.

Rising Temps linked to Suicides

Rising Temps linked to Suicides (Climate Change) 7/2018

The links between mental health and global warming have not been widely researched but the new work analysed temperature and suicides across the US and Mexico in recent decades. It found that the rate of suicide rose by 0.7% in the US and by 2.1% in Mexico when the average monthly temperature rose by 1C.

Deadly Heat Waves Could Endanger 74% of Mankind by 2100, Study Says

Inside Climate News 6/19/2017

A new online tool explores the number of days per year in places worldwide when heat is likely to exceed a deadly threshold if nothing is done about climate change.

Global risk of deadly heat

Nature 06/2017

Climate change can increase the risk of conditions that exceed human thermoregulatory capacity1,2,3,4,5,6. Although numerous studies report increased mortality associated with extreme heat events1,2,3,4,5,6,7, quantifying the global risk of heat-related mortality remains challenging due to a lack of comparable data on heat-related deaths2,3,4,5. Here we conducted a global analysis of documented lethal heat events to identify the climatic conditions associated with human death and then quantified the current and projected occurrence of such deadly climatic conditions worldwide.

Heatwaves: Number of deadly heat days

Nature 06/2017

Online Tool