One of the factors that have a significant impact on human life is climate and weather change. Of course, people can adapt to a wide variety of living conditions, from the Arctic tundra to the African desert, but there are limits to everything. Sharp and short-term changes in weather have serious consequences for human health, wherever people live.
Extreme heatwaves or extreme cold spells lead to more frequent heatstroke or hypothermia, as well as an increase in respiratory disease and cardiovascular mortality.
The stagnant atmosphere in cities retains warm air and its polluting emissions, contributing to the formation of smog, which is harmful to health.
Storms, snowfalls, droughts, floods, and hurricanes are also extreme weather events that affect people's lives and health. In addition to significant damage to economic activity, these phenomena lead to starvation and the spread of infectious diseases associated with lack of clean water.
Waterborne diseases spread by insects such as mosquitoes are also highly dependent on climatic conditions. They are among the leading causes of death worldwide. It has been estimated that about 3.3 million people died from diarrhea, malaria, and hunger in 2002, and about a third of them in the African region.
The increase in extreme weather events is largely a sign of global warming. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other combustion products have increased by 30 percent over the past 50 years. About two-thirds of the sunlight reaching the Earth is absorbed by the Earth's surface, warming it and the atmosphere surrounding the Earth. However, the problem is that the increased carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere traps natural heat radiation, overheats the lower layers of the air at the surface and creates a greenhouse effect. This leads to an increase in average annual temperature, resulting in increased precipitation and flooding in some areas and droughts in others, warming, and rising sea levels, and increased rates of polar ice melting. In addition, changes in the warm and cold currents of the world's oceans disrupt the movement of atmospheric flows and lead to a much more frequent formation of tropical cyclones.
In Greenland, for example, there is a catastrophic loss of snow and ice cover. In the ten years between 2003 and 2013, Greenlandic ice lost about 10 billion tons of mass and all this water ended up in the ocean. A similar pattern is also observed in Antarctica.
One should not think that sea-level rise is a minor phenomenon. It will not only affect small islands like the Maldives, Marshall Islands or Tuvalu. More than half of the world's population may be homeless. Already now, the danger hangs over the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Ganges and Brahmaputra Deltas in Bangladesh and India. In Ukraine, the territory of the Odessa region is also under threat. Meteorologists predict that water levels in the Danube Delta will rise by 50 cm by 2050. The first results of this process have demonstrated the recent floods.
Nor does my country shy away from the general trend of increased precipitation on the planet. Abnormal showers and snowfalls have affected not only Asia and America but also Ukraine. Scientists predict that temperatures will rise by an average of 1.5 to 3 degrees Celsius, which already leads to heavy precipitation, the risk of ice in winter and sharp changes in the weather from rain to heat in summer.
And in general, the consequences of global warming are negative for the planet. While climate change mitigation at high latitudes may seem favorable, annual periods of extreme heat in many parts of the world from Europe to Australia cannot be considered beneficial. In addition, hard-to-predict, so-called unstable rainfall patterns threaten the availability of drinking water and increase the risk of water-borne diseases. It also harms agriculture, can reduce food production in many poor areas and increases the risk of hunger. The threat of coastal flooding can lead to significant population migration, which will also create difficulties in many economies. Also, the temporal and geographical limits of many diseases will change. This is particularly dangerous for areas that lack population immunity and a strong health infrastructure.
It is very difficult to accurately measure the impact of climate change on people's health and lives, but it is undeniable that it exists. And in the future, this impact will only increase.