The climate we live in influences many areas of our lives. The quality of the food we eat, the water we drink, and our homes are all dependent upon our climate and weather. Some scientists have suggested that a warmer world would be a sicker world.
Climate researchers predict that the world climate will become warmer, with high temperatures in summer becoming more frequent and very cold winters rarer.
With winters becoming milder, there are likely to be up to 20, 000 fewer cold-related deaths. However, there is a danger that bacteria would no longer die off seasonally during the cold period, which means that diseases may spread more widely.
More heat waves may increase the number of hot-weather related deaths by up to 2, 800. Exposure to higher levels of UV light(ultraviolet light)could cause an extra 5, 000 deaths a year from skin cancer and may cause an increase of up to 2, 000 cases of eye diseases. Warmer summers may cause up to 10, 000 extra cases of food poisoning each year.
Higher average global temperatures mean that diseases, or their carriers, may be able to move to areas that were previously too cold for them to survive. It is possible that a mild type of malaria(疟疾)will become established in some parts of the world and be a recurring threat for up to four months each year.
Globally, there are likely to be more floods, more droughts, and more storms, which will cause damage to our homes, food, and water supplies and then influence our health. The same could be said of an increase in flooding which would promote the spread of waterborne diseases, and droughts which would favor white flies and locusts.
Scientists have been studying the relationship between the outbreak of a severe disease in Africa and weather patterns. They believe that a rare climate pattern may come before outbreaks of the disease.
Climate change is likely to have unequal influences on the world population. Those living in poor and developing countries are going to be less able to adapt to the changes. Health influences are not likely to be limited to the human population—wildlife would also be severely affected.
