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(IANS)
As night-time temperatures rise due to climate change, your risk of dying increases – nearly six-fold in the future – from excessive heat disrupting normal sleep patterns, a new global study warns.
According to researchers from China, South Korea, Japan, Germany and the US, excessively hot nights caused by climate change are expected to increase mortality rates worldwide by up to 60 percent by the end of the century.
Ambient heat during the night can disrupt normal sleep physiology, and less sleep can lead to immune system damage and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic disease, inflammation and mental illness, according to the study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
“The risks of nighttime temperature rises have often been neglected,” said study co-author Yuqiang Zhang, a climate scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US.
“The frequency and mean intensity of hot nights would increase by more than 30 percent and 60 percent, respectively, by the 21st century, compared with a less than 20 percent increase in daily average temperature,” said Zhang of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Gillings School.
The results show that the average intensity of hot nighttime events will nearly double by 2090, from 20.4 degrees Celsius to 39.7 degrees Celsius in 28 cities in East Asia, increasing the burden of disease from excessive heat and disrupting normal sleep patterns.
This is the first study to estimate the impact of hotter nights on mortality risk from climate change.
The results showed that the mortality burden could be significantly higher than estimated by the average daily temperature rise, suggesting that warming from climate change could have worrying effects even under the constraints of the Paris Climate Agreement.
The team estimated mortality from excessive heat in 28 cities in China, South Korea and Japan between 1980 and 2015 and applied them to two climate change modeling scenarios that matched the CO2 reduction scenarios adapted by the respective national governments.
Using this model, the team estimated that the risk of death from sweltering nights would increase almost six-fold between 2016 and 2100.
This prediction is much higher than the mortality risk from daily average warming suggested by climate change models.
“From our study, we highlight that when assessing the burden of disease from non-optimal temperature, governments and local decision-makers should consider the additional health effects of the disproportionate temperature fluctuations within a day,” said Haidong Kan, a professor at Fudan University in China.
Because the study only included 28 cities from three countries, Zhang said that “extrapolating these results to the entire East Asian region or other regions should be cautious.”
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