Latest news with #LondonSchoolofHygiene&TropicalMedicine
Sydney Morning Herald
19-07-2025
- Climate
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘A sardine can in the Sahara': In London, the heat is on
Climate change is one of the stories. The discomfort in a London bus is only worth mentioning because it is a small part of a big shift. The Met Office, the UK government's meteorological agency, says the past three years have been among the country's five warmest on record. Parts of England are in drought. The Royal Meteorological Society has just found that the United Kingdom has warmed about 0.25 degrees Celsius each decade since the 1980s. It says recent warming has exceeded any temperatures observed in central England in 300 years. Now there is a much sharper focus on heat as a silent killer. Scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine worked with colleagues at Imperial College London to examine historical records and compare them to the heatwave across Europe from June 23 to July 2 this year. Their conclusion? Around 2300 people may have died as a result of the extreme temperatures across 12 major cities. This included 263 deaths in London. So London has to brace for the heat. At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a few stops on the line from where I live, the curator of living collections, Simon Toomer, says they are changing the way they garden to conserve water and save plants. Loading When I ask about adapting to hotter summers, he mentions choosing different species. 'Plants from warmer, drier areas of the world with climates similar to Kew's future conditions are being collected and planted to replace failing species,' he says. As the climate changes, so will the plants at Kew. There are some intractable debates ahead – and not just about climate targets. Britain is so unready for the heat that some people want the country to accept air conditioning as a solution. London is full of Victorian housing fitted with radiators for winter and nothing for summer, because summers used to be milder. Air con is intensely resisted by those who believe it will only add to electricity use and carbon emissions. The advocates, however, say solar and wind power will make it viable and ethical. You can tell the argument will only intensify with every heatwave. It rained last night, finally. But here are words I never thought I'd write in England: it did not rain enough. Parts of London are so parched they look familiar to me. The grass on the nearby football field is as brown and crunchy as a Canberra oval at Christmas. The Thames near Brentford would be a comforting sight for anyone homesick for Lake Burley Griffin, with its weeds and muddy water. Not that I'm homesick for the lake. There is just too much to do. A final note. If you were a reader when I was covering federal politics in Canberra, thank you. I meant to write a final column to say farewell, but ran out of time while packing up the house. If you are a new reader now that I am in the World pages, welcome aboard – it will be a fascinating ride. But let's not take the bus just yet.
The Age
19-07-2025
- Climate
- The Age
‘A sardine can in the Sahara': In London, the heat is on
Climate change is one of the stories. The discomfort in a London bus is only worth mentioning because it is a small part of a big shift. The Met Office, the UK government's meteorological agency, says the past three years have been among the country's five warmest on record. Parts of England are in drought. The Royal Meteorological Society has just found that the United Kingdom has warmed about 0.25 degrees Celsius each decade since the 1980s. It says recent warming has exceeded any temperatures observed in central England in 300 years. Now there is a much sharper focus on heat as a silent killer. Scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine worked with colleagues at Imperial College London to examine historical records and compare them to the heatwave across Europe from June 23 to July 2 this year. Their conclusion? Around 2300 people may have died as a result of the extreme temperatures across 12 major cities. This included 263 deaths in London. So London has to brace for the heat. At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a few stops on the line from where I live, the curator of living collections, Simon Toomer, says they are changing the way they garden to conserve water and save plants. Loading When I ask about adapting to hotter summers, he mentions choosing different species. 'Plants from warmer, drier areas of the world with climates similar to Kew's future conditions are being collected and planted to replace failing species,' he says. As the climate changes, so will the plants at Kew. There are some intractable debates ahead – and not just about climate targets. Britain is so unready for the heat that some people want the country to accept air conditioning as a solution. London is full of Victorian housing fitted with radiators for winter and nothing for summer, because summers used to be milder. Air con is intensely resisted by those who believe it will only add to electricity use and carbon emissions. The advocates, however, say solar and wind power will make it viable and ethical. You can tell the argument will only intensify with every heatwave. It rained last night, finally. But here are words I never thought I'd write in England: it did not rain enough. Parts of London are so parched they look familiar to me. The grass on the nearby football field is as brown and crunchy as a Canberra oval at Christmas. The Thames near Brentford would be a comforting sight for anyone homesick for Lake Burley Griffin, with its weeds and muddy water. Not that I'm homesick for the lake. There is just too much to do. A final note. If you were a reader when I was covering federal politics in Canberra, thank you. I meant to write a final column to say farewell, but ran out of time while packing up the house. If you are a new reader now that I am in the World pages, welcome aboard – it will be a fascinating ride. But let's not take the bus just yet.
Ammon
12-07-2025
- Health
- Ammon
Extreme heat could lead to 30,000 deaths a year in UK by 2070
Ammon News - More than 30,000 people a year in England and Wales could die from heat-related causes by the 2070s, scientists have warned. A new study calculates that heat mortality could rise more than fiftyfold in 50 years because of climate heating. Researchers at UCL and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine compared different potential scenarios, looking at levels of warming, measures to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, regional climatic differences and potential power outages. They also modelled the ageing population. Between 1981 and 2021, there were on average 634 heat-related deaths in England and Wales a year. The research, published in PLoS Climate, found that – in the worst-case scenario of 4.3C of warming by the end of the century and assuming minimal adaptation to mitigate the effects – heat-related deaths would increase sixteenfold to 10,317 in the 2050s, and would exceed 34,000 by the 2070s. Even if temperature rises are limited to 1.6C of warming over preindustrial levels and high levels of adaptation are put in place, annual heat-related deaths will still increase up to sixfold by the 2070s. The record-setting hot summer of 2022 – when temperatures reached 40.3C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire – had 2,985 excess heat deaths, indicating a potential 'new normal' by as early as the 2050s, the research concluded. The findings come as the UK Health Security Agency issued a yellow heat health alert for all regions from Thursday 10 July until Tuesday 15 July. Temperatures were expected to reach 27-29C in large parts of England and Wales on Thursday, with hotter weather of up to 31-33C forecast for the weekend. Dr Clare Heaviside, a senior author at UCL Bartlett School Environment, Energy & Resources, said the findings painted 'a sobering picture of the consequences of climate change'. 'Over the next 50 years,' she said, 'the health impacts of a warming climate are going to be significant. We can mitigate their severity by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and with carefully planned adaptations, but we have to start now.' The research also found that previous research underestimated heat mortality by not assessing the impact of older societies. Over the next 50 years, the population of England and Wales is predicted to age significantly, with the greatest increase in population size for those age 65 and over by the 2060s. Older people are more vulnerable in hot weather, with an extra 250 million people worldwide age 69 or above who will be exposed to dangerous levels of heat by 2050. The Guardian
The Hill
09-07-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Human-induced warming contributed to 1,500 deaths in last week's European heat wave: Report
Climate change caused by humans played a direct role in the deaths of about 1,504 people during a heat wave that struck Europe last week, a new report has found. Warming linked to the combustion of fossil fuels nearly tripled the number of heat-related fatalities that occurred during the June 23 to July 2 period, according to the report, published by the Imperial College London's Grantham Institute. Human-induced warming, which increased heatwave temperatures by up to 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit), was responsible for about 65 percent of the total 2,305 heat-related deaths, the data showed. The researchers, who also worked with scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, tabulated 317 excess heat deaths in Milan, 286 in Barcelona, 235 in Paris, 1,712 in London, 164 in Rome, 108 in Madrid, 96 in Athens, 47 in Budapest, 31 in Zagreb, 21 in Frankfurt, 21 in Lisbon and six in Sassari, Italy. The climate-driven death toll in many European cities surpassed that of other recent disasters, including the 2024 floods of Valencia and the 2021 floods of northwest Europe, in which 224 and 243 deaths occurred, respectively, per the report. With individuals aged 65 and older making up 88 percent of the fatalities, the researchers stressed that people with underlying health conditions may be most vulnerable to premature death during heatwaves. To draw their conclusions, the researchers first used peer-reviewed methods to derive age-group specific estimates of links between temperature and mortality in the 12 cities of interest. They then applied established epidemiological tools to compare the heat intensities for each city, under both the observed conditions and hypothetical scenarios without the influences of warming. 'Without human induced climate change early heatwaves of the temperatures observed would have been much rarer,' the authors stated. The heatwaves would have been 2-4 degrees Celsius (3.6-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler in all the cities aside from Lisbon, per the research. 'The findings of this analysis and many others are extremely clear: heat extremes all across Europe are increasing rapidly due to human-induced climate change,' the authors stated. Although the researchers acknowledged that heat action plans and early-warning systems are increasingly being implemented across the region, they identified 'an urgent need for an accelerated roll-out of further adaptation measures.' Such action is critical, they concluded, due to the 'increasing vulnerability driven by the intersecting trends of climate change, aging population and urbanization.'
Miami Herald
09-07-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
Man-made climate change made European heat wave much more deadly
July 9 (UPI) -- Heat-related deaths in Europe's latest heat wave that ended last week were three times higher than they would have been without the warming of the planet caused by man-made climate change, British scientists said Wednesday. Climate-warming caused by burning fossil fuels, including oil, gas and coal, made the heatwave much hotter, boosting heat deaths from about 800 to an estimated 2,300 across 12 European cities, according to a new research study published by Imperial College London's Grantham Institute. "Rapid analysis" of the period June 23 through July 2 using existing peer-reviewed methods found climate change nearly tripled the number of heat-related deaths, with fossil fuel burning driving additional temperature rise of up to 4 degrees Celsius. During 10 days of heat peaking on July 1, Milan saw the most excess deaths due to climate change at 317, followed by Barcelona with 286, Paris, 235, London, 171, and Rome, 164. Sassari on the island of Sardinia, had just six excess deaths due to climate change-induced heat, notwithstanding that it has a population around 1/70th the size of London. The elderly were disproportionately affected, with people older than 65 accounting for 88% of the deaths due to climate change, which the study said underscored the scale of the risk of premature death in heatwaves for people with underlying health conditions and for Europe with its aging population. However, the scientists at Imperial and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine warned that the figures meant the likely death toll far exceeded other recent weather disasters, including floods in Valencia in summer 2024 and floods in northwestern Europe in 2021. "This study demonstrates why heat waves are known as silent killers," said Malcolm Mistry, co-author of the study and an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told The Guardian. Imperial College climate scientist Ben Clarke said the dangers of heat waves were not widely recognized, as the deaths they caused did not grab the headlines like other disasters. "Heat waves don't leave a trail of destruction like wildfires or storms. Their impacts are mostly invisible but quietly devastating. A change of just 2 or 3 degrees Celsius can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people." Imperial College climate specialist Garyfallos Konstantinoudis said the actual number of climate change heat-related deaths for all of Europe may well be in the tens of thousands as the study was only a snapshot, not the full picture. The study warns that heat waves would continue to get hotter and predicts the number of people dying would continue to rise unless the world stops burning fossil fuels and achieves net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Separate data from the Spanish government pinpointed at least 450 extreme heat-related deaths between June 21 and July 2, up more than 70% from 2022, when 40 degrees Celsius plus temperatures killed record numbers of people. The European Union's Climate Change Service said the global temperature in June was the highest ever recorded. It said an "exceptional" marine heatwave in the western Mediterranean pushed the daily sea surface temperature to a record 27 degrees Celsius. Heat-related deaths are forecast to be 10 times higher when global temperature rises hits 1.5 degrees Celsius and 30 times higher at 3 degrees Celsius, the European Environment Agency warned last month. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
