Climate change responsible for 37% of global heat deaths
Climate change is responsible for more than one-third of the planet's heat deaths each year, according to a new study. The findings, published in , notes that 37 percent of heat-related deaths in 732 cities across the globe are the result of human-induced warming. The researchers looked at data spanning from 1991 to 2018 to come up with their findings. That equates to about 9,700 people per year just from those cities, but the researchers say the problem is significantly larger when looking at more than just those cities. 'These are deaths related to heat that actually can be prevented. It is something we directly cause,' said Ana Vicedo-Cabrera, an epidemiologist at the Institute of Social and Preventative Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland. The highest percentages of heat deaths caused by climate change were in cities in South America. Vicedo-Cabrera pointed to southern Europe and southern Asia as other hot spots for climate change-related heat deaths. scientists say that's only a sliver of climate's overall toll - even more people die from other extreme weather amplified by global warming such as storms, flooding and drought - and the heat death numbers will grow exponentially with rising temperatures. Sao Paulo, Brazil, has the most climate-related heat deaths, averaging 239 a year, researchers found. About 35% of heat deaths in the United States can be blamed on climate change, the study found. That's a total of more than 1,100 deaths a year in about 200 U.S. cities, topped by 141 in New York. Honolulu had the highest portion of heat deaths attributable to climate change, 82%. Scientists used decades of mortality data in the 732 cities to plot curves detailing how each city's death rate changes with temperature and how the heat-death curves vary from city to city. Some cities adapt to heat better than others because of air conditioning, cultural factors and environmental conditions, Vicedo-Cabrera said. Then researchers took observed temperatures and compared them with 10 computer models simulating a world without climate change. The difference is warming humans caused. By applying that scientifically accepted technique to the individualized heat-death curves for the 732 cities, the scientists calculated extra heat deaths from climate change. 'People continue to ask for proof that climate change is already affecting our health. This attribution study directly answers that question using state-of-the-science epidemiological methods, and the amount of data the authors have amassed for analysis is impressive,' said Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin. Patz, who wasn't part of the study, said it was one of the first to detail climate change-related heat deaths now, rather than in the future.