2. Chapters… Water – on your own Hurricanes – on your own
Wildfires - done
Tropical forests of Amazonia - done

3. Your prospectus
Updated version to be received today

4. syllabus
New syllabus to be given to you all Tuesday

5. Human Ecology of Climate Change: Food and Public Health

6. Global crop production and food security
Impacts of a carbon dioxide doubling on crop production will most likely be fairly small at the global scale – but significant in tropical larger; larger carbon dioxide increases would likely result in significant global losses
Overall uncertainty remains poorly quantified
Large uncertainties associated with agricultural impact analyses have important implications for agricultural development
Climate change is just ONE of several ongoing trends that will shape the future of food security

7. Expected impacts Developed countries Developing countries
Gains expected in all but the warmest scenarios
Developing countries
Worse impacts
Warmer current climates + limited human adaptive capacity
Expected food insecurity -> could impact 300 million *additional* people
Existing food insecurity

8. uncertainties Different agricultural regions
Example: grid resolution
Impacts of carbon dioxide fertilization?
How to quantify? Need to include interactions of CO2 with temperature, water, nutrients, and other factors
One solution? Adopt a conservative policy approach and assume no carbon dioxide fertilization effect
Hunger: 20 to 30 million; w/o – 50 to 600 million

9. uncertainties Yield response to changes in mean growing season climate
Most crops exhibit reduced yields in warmer years
Exceptions – high latitude regions – were warmer = longer growing season
Less analyzed: uncertainties in crop responses
4. Yield response to changes in climate variability
Increased climate variability -> negative impacts on cropping systems; extent: uncertain
Crop yields + farmers management practices

10. uncertainties 5. Adaptations
assumption: farmers and other institutions will respond to changes – either by changing practices at the farm level or by shifting in production between different parts of the world
Examples: planting date? Cultivar choice? New irrigation infrastructure?
More effective in developed rather than developing world
Other uncertainties?

11. Additional impacts Extreme climate events
Ozone effects on yields [fossil fuel burning and increased temp will result in significant increases in tropospheric ozone levels]
Pest and disease damage
Sea-level rise
Grain quality effects
Impacts on non-major crops

12. Climate Change and Human Health

13. Climate Change and Human Health
Climate change should be billed as a 'health' not 'environmental' disaster
The researchers from George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication (4C), whose study was recently published in the BMC public health journal, said the health impacts of climate change had been 'dramatically under-represented' in discussions by scientists, policy-makers and NGOs who instead focused on 'geographically remote' impacts like melting ice caps in the Arctic.

14. Epidemiological Framework
Environment
Agent
Host
Social
Global
Ecosystems

15. Climate change and health: pathway from driving forces, through exposures to potential health impact.
Source: Climate Change and Human Health – Risks and Reponses. Summary (WHO, 2003)

16. Climate Change and Human Health Pathways

17. POOR RAINS
Inadequate in volume and distribution
Poor grass
Poor Harvest
People Underfed
(Malnutrition)
Overgrazing where grass is good
Less meat, less milk
Animals underfed
Grass /vegetation cover lost
Over-grazing, trees cut down for fuel
Poverty
Animal death
LAND DEGRADATION

18. Model projections Projected impacts of heat waves
Average summer mortality rates attributed to hot weather episodes
Changes with doubling or tripling of carbon dioxide
-> projections of mortality can double or triple in next several decades

19. What have we seen? Recent Heat Waves
Location Year Approx. No.
Deaths
Western Europe ,392*
Europe ,000#
India ,541^
USA
USA
USA
Aust [Melbourne] ^
* Netherlands 1,000; Belgium 940.
# Italy 20,089; France 19,490; Spain 15,090; Germany 9,355.
^ Estimation. Total probably higher.
India: June 2003
T: 122 degrees F > 1400 deaths
July Floods
Japanese B encephalitis

20. Summer 2003 heat wave France, Germany, Italy, Spain, & Portugal
Up to 72,000 deaths
Temperature was 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) above 30 year average

21. European Heatwave 2003

22. Hotter?
Expect more extreme weather events But not all extreme weather events are attributable to CC
Need to know: what is expected with natural variability assuming no carbon dioxide forcing and with climate forcing from additional anthropogenic greenhouse gases
UK HadCM3 model: an exceptionally warm summer up to 2020 will become a normal summer by the 2040s in Europe … they projected an increase 100-fold over the next four decades

23. So…Effects of Climate Change
DIRECT: Thermal stresses: extremes
of hot or cold
Respiratory consequences:
changes in patterns of exposure to spores, moulds, etc.
Direct effects:
loss of life or health due to: storms, floods, drought

24. Air pollution and climate change
Asthma: 2-3 x since 1984
Diesel particles mold
Indoor pollutants
Socio/economic/emotional factors
Pollen and Ground-level ozone
Heat waves
Droughts and fires
Floods and fungi
Pollen and carbon dioxide

25. Emerging infectious diseases
30 diseases new to medicine since 1976
New diseases…
Old diseases…
As climate changes
Change the range at which they occur
Extremes affect vector populations

26. Infectious Diseases
Increased mean, minimum temps along with wetter winters affects the range, proliferation and behavior of vector organisms
Developed world populations generally have more resources to face such problems
Malaria currently affects 350 million people annually, 2 million deaths
Potential for transmission of malaria from 45% - 60% of world’s population

32. Biologic response to changes in climate
Global warming and wider fluctuation in weather help to spread diseases
Temperatures – affect growth, development and survival of microbes and the vectors
Weather affects the timing and intensity of disease outbreaks (McMichael et al, 2003)

33. Biologic response to changes in climate: Infectious diseases
Warmer environment and mosquitoes
Boost rate of reproduction
Increase the number of blood meal
Prolongs their breeding season
Shorten the maturation period of microbes they carry
Warmer winters – tick-borne lyme disease spreading northward in Sweden, US and Canada (Epstein, 2005)
Heavy downpours
Drive rodents from burrows: risk of zoonotic diseases
Create mosquito breeding sites
Faster fungal growth in houses
Flush pathogens and chemicals into waterways
Milwaukee’s cryptosporidiosis outbreak in 1993
Katrina’s flood: water-borne pathogens and toxins spread.

34. Extreme weather events and disease clusters
Extremes!
High correlation between droughts & floods and rodent-borne and mosquito-borne diseases
Sequence of extremes
Example: Hurricane Mitch (Honduras)
6 feet of rain in 3 days

35. Precipitation extremes
Past century average annual precipitation: 7%
Heavy rain events (> 2 inches/day): 14%
Very heavy rain events (> 4 inches/day): 20%
Western drought + Devastating rains

37. Diseases Carried By Mosquitoes
West Nile
Malaria
Dengue Fever
Yellow Fever
West Nile (1937: Uganda. Now: Spreading across Canada)
Wet spring. Dry, hot summer
Climate change will
influence spread of WNV
And occurrences of other
Vector diseases

40. Does climate change have a measurable impact on health?
Climate sensitivity:
5% increase in diarrhoeal disease for each 1o C temperature increase
(developing countries only)
Change in relative risk:
Projected temperature changes relative to , overlaid on population
distribution map to give per capita increase in diarrhoea risk.
Disease burden attributable to climate change:
Relative risk under each scenario/time point multiplied by WHO estimates of
current and future 'baseline' diarrhoea burden in each region.
Estimated 2.4% of diarrhoea (47,000 deaths) attributable to CC in 2000, and
approximately 5% ( 60,000 deaths) in (World Health Report 2002)

41. Climate change will Impact on all these Relationships!! Primary
economic,
technological
social, cultural
drivers
An EcoHealth View
Health impact
Climate change will
Impact on all these
Relationships!!
e.g., + UVrad
thermal stress
Environmental
change
Ecosystem
change
+mosquitoes
+/- food
Health impact
T, soils
Livelihood
population
Social, political
Economic
relations
Jobs,poverty
consumption
Health impact
Socio-economic
Level of risk

42. INDIRECT: Effects of Climate Change
MANY UNCERTAINTIES
Alterations in range and activity of vector-borne pathogens e.g., malaria, West Nile virus, dengue
Possibility of new infectious disease agents
Changes in person-person infections including food-borne and water-borne
Nutritional and health consequences of local and regional changes in agricultural production
Consequences of sea level rise
Loss of home, employment, population displacement

43. Human impacts of other forms of overload
Human environments and livelihoods deteriorate
Social destabilization and conflict will escalate
Some of the world’s poorest populations becoming more “demographically entrapped” McMichael, 1997 limited data
Land exceeds carrying capacity starvation, disease, fratricide
Rwanda prototype 1980s

44. Vector-borne diseases
Climate change, by altering local weather patterns and by disturbing life-supporting natural systems has significant implications for human health
Models suggest that higher temperatures will enhance the geographic range and transmission rates of vector-borne diseases
Children will be disproportionately affected, as they are more prone to infection and death from parasites.

45. Food security and malnutrition
Many of Africa’s poor are very highly dependent on climate-related factors for their livelihoods.
Weather disruptions exacerbated by climate change negatively impact Africa’s economic growth and food security, and thus aggravate malnutrition
Undernourishment is a well-studied cause of stunted physical and intellectual development and increased disease susceptibility in children.

46. Food Production
In some countries affects nutritional status, child growth, health
Depletion of ocean resources unless offset by advances in aquaculture jeopardize health in developing/poor countries

47. Sea-level rise Displacement of coastal population
Predicted rise of 0.5 m would immediately inundate 10% of land in Bangladesh
Alters sewage and waste disposal
Viability of coral reefs and wetlands
Again affects range of disease vectors

48. Land degradation Absolute numbers of malnourished persons increasing
Many world’s fisheries overexploited
World loss of biodiversity
We have occupied, damaged or eliminated natural habitats of many species
Fastest loss of species ever; we may cause 1/3 of all species alive in last century to be gone before end of this century

49. Land degradation
Agricultural productivity: to maintain food production have to resort to maintaining vigor and resilience by diversity of species to be source of genetic additives
A high number of medicinal drugs come from naturals; can’t be replicated in labs
Science continues to test many new drugs from nature each year

50. Climate Change and Environmental Justice
Oil-related health consequences
Extraction: Nigeria, Ecuador, Mexico
Refining and Benzene
Utility plants and mercury
Air pollution and inner city truck routes
Economic inequities
Vulnerabilities – coping, adaptation
Restoration, prevention
Public health infrastructure
Still: No nation is immune