Climate Impact on Human Health

A special issue of Climate (ISSN 2225-1154). This special issue belongs to the section "Weather, Events and Impacts".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2024 | Viewed by 1049

Special Issue Editors

School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China
Interests: economics; environmental management; environmental health; environmental finance; climate change; air quality

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Guest Editor
School of Public Health, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Interests: air pollution; climate change; environmental epidemiology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
School of Economics and Finance, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
Interests: economics; environmental economics; energy economics; finance
Institute of Basic Medical Science, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
Interests: epidemiology; public health; nutrition and dietetics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Within the framework of global warming, climate change affects social systems, economic systems and ecosystems as well as posing serious challenges to the survival and development of human societies. Among these, climate change threatens public health in particular. Global climate change not only brings about an increase in average temperatures, but also leads to a trend of frequent, widespread, intense and concurrent extreme weather and climate events, which will have a wide and complex impact on public health through direct and indirect impact pathways.

Evidence from studies has shown that climate change not only increases the risk of occurrence of human infectious diseases, chronic diseases and even acute injuries or premature deaths, but also causes mental health problems of varying degrees. Addressing climate change and reducing health risks has become a major issue that needs to be solved urgently. With the increasing attention and deepening of climate health risk research, interdisciplinary research has become an important feature of this research, combining climate science, geography, epidemiology, economics, management and other disciplines to explore policies and actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Many international organizations have also undertaken related work, such as the Lancet published Countdown Report on Population Health and Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published Working Group I report of its Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Natural Science Basis, and the United Nations has already made climate action one of its sustainable development goals.

Addressing climate change requires the participation of the whole society, and requires scientists, economists and others to conduct research on climate health risk assessment and prediction, as well as theories and methods of climate change policy assessment, in order to facilitate policy makers' decisions and choices. Based on the above, we cordially invite scientists and economists academics to contribute with their research papers on various aspects of the climate change and human health in the following Topics.

Potential themes relevant to this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Health risk assessments of climate change;
  • Direct and indirect effects of climate change on health;
  • Impacts of climate change on diseases (respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, COVID-19 outbreaks, etc.);
  • Estimation of health risks for the population in different climate scenarios;
  • Research on climate change risk response and adaptive capacity;
  • Research on policies and actions to address climate change.

Dr. Zhiming Yang
Dr. Yunquan Zhang
Dr. Zheming Yan
Dr. Ang Li
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Climate is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • climate change
  • extreme weather
  • climate risk
  • burden of disease
  • physical health
  • mental health
  • climate policy

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

6 pages, 486 KiB  
Communication
Were the 2022 Summer Heatwaves a Strong Cause of Europe’s Excess Deaths?
by Jarle Aarstad
Climate 2024, 12(5), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli12050069 - 9 May 2024
Viewed by 530
Abstract
During the 2022 summer, Europe experienced heatwaves with record temperatures, and a study has argued that they caused about 62,000 deaths between 30 May and 4 September. The total number of excess deaths during the same period was about 137,000, indicating that the [...] Read more.
During the 2022 summer, Europe experienced heatwaves with record temperatures, and a study has argued that they caused about 62,000 deaths between 30 May and 4 September. The total number of excess deaths during the same period was about 137,000, indicating that the heatwaves were a substantial contributor. Not ruling out that explanation entirely, this paper argues that it was unlikely a strong cause. First, if the heatwaves were a strong cause of numerous deaths, one would assume that the older and deprived were relatively likely to die. However, during the 2022 summer heatwaves in England, which were claimed to have caused about 2900 deaths, the oldest age cohort did not have a higher excess death rate than the middle age cohort, and the excess death rate actually decreased with deprivation status. Moreover, Iceland had among Europe’s highest excess death rates during the summer, which cannot be attributed to heatwaves. During June, July, and August 2022, comparable southern hemisphere countries furthermore had high excess death rates, which cannot be attributed to heatwaves either, as it was during their winter. Also, Europe’s excess death rate was higher during the 2022–2023 winter than during the 2022 summer, and intuitively not attributed to heatwaves, but neither to cold weather, as that winter was abnormally mild. Finally, the paper discusses the puzzling issue that about 56% more women than men, relative to the population, presumably died from the heatwaves. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Impact on Human Health)
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