Thursday, October 24, 2013

Climate change increased the number of deaths

Space Daily via SPX: The increased temperatures caused by ongoing climate change in Stockholm, Sweden between 1980 and 2009 caused 300 more premature deaths than if the temperature increase did not take place. In Sweden as a whole, it would mean about 1,500 more premature deaths, according to a study from researchers at Umea University published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Global warming does not only give a general increase in temperature, but it also increases the frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves. Previous studies have shown that these changes are associated with increased mortality, especially during extremely hot periods. It also speculated that mortality associated with extreme cold could decrease as a result of a warmer climate.

Researchers at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umea University, conducted a study in which they examined the extent to which mortality associated with extreme temperatures occurred in Stockholm during the period 1980-2009. In order to assess what can be regarded as extreme temperatures, they compared temperature data from this period with the corresponding data for the period 1900 to 1929.

The study shows that the number of periods of extremely high temperatures increased significantly over the period 1980-2009, all of which contributed to about 300 more deaths during these heat waves than had been the case without climate change....

Evening in Stockholm, shot by Oke, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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