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What is climate?

“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get”¹ seems an adequately simple explanation. Ironically, this definition is from a 1973 science fiction novel and today, climate patterns and weather are becoming increasingly unbelievable.

Like storylines from a movie, extreme weather reports make frequent headlines. Here’s a small sampling from just the first few months of 2007:

• Alaskans have been struggling through one of the snowiest winters in history, with 74 inches having fallen in late December and January, with three more months of winter to go
• Following a week of record-setting, bone-chilling subzero temperatures in the Midwestern US which left some 20 people dead, a week-long "lake effect" snowstorm dropped 120 inches in upstate New York
• A spring storm triggered 65 tornadoes across the Midwestern US, one of which was the size of two football fields

Scientists are leery to connect specific storms to climate change, but their occurrence is increasing as the temperature rises. And why is the temperature rising? Because our activities are altering the world’s climate. We are increasing the atmospheric concentration of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide (mostly from burning fossil fuels for heat, energy and fuel), thereby increasing the natural "greenhouse effect" that makes the Earth livable for human beings.

“What changed in the US with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences…” Al Gore

As we release increasing amounts of greenhouse gases, the climate changes and the consequences of our actions become more and more apparent. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported this startling statistic: human-induced changes in the Earth's climate now lead to at least 5 million cases of illness and more than 150,000 deaths every year.
Significant short-term fluctuations in weather can cause acute adverse health effects:

• Extremes of both heat and cold can cause potentially fatal illnesses, e.g. heat stress or hypothermia, as well as increasing death rates from heart and respiratory diseases.² In some places, the number of deaths related to heat waves is projected to double by 20203.
• In cities, stagnant weather conditions can trap both warm air and air pollutants -- leading to smog episodes, increased ground-level ozone and the dispersal of allergens all with significant health impacts.²

Other weather extremes, such as heavy rains, floods, and hurricanes, also result in a complex array of severe impacts on health. Aside from causing death by drowning, these disasters promote the spread of infectious disease. According to Paul Epstein in “Is Global Warming Harmful to Health,” “that prospect is deeply troubling, because infectious illness is a genie that can be very hard to put back into its bottle. It may kill fewer people in one fell swoop than a raging flood or an extended drought, but once it takes root in a community, it often defies eradication and can invade other areas.”³
This issue poses the greatest threat to developing nations, where resources for prevention and treatment can be scarce. But advanced nations, too, are vulnerable —as seen when the West Nile virus broke out for the first time in the US in 1999, killing seven.4 In 2006, that number had increased to 174.⁴

Global warming will also promote waterborne diseases. Warming itself can contribute to the change, as can resulting droughts and floods. Droughts can wipe out supplies of safe drinking water and concentrate contaminants that might otherwise remain dilute. Floods wash sewage, other pathogens, pesticides and fertilizers into drinking water supplies. Fertilizer and sewage can combine with warm water to create breeding grounds for harmful algae. Some of these algal blooms are directly toxic to humans through inhalation of their vapors; others contaminate fish and shellfish, which, when eaten, sicken the consumers.3 Recent discoveries have revealed that algal blooms can threaten human health in yet another way. As they grow bigger, they support the proliferation of various pathogens, among them Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of cholera.3

The environmental ministers from the G-8 nations have unanimously approved a declaration on children’s environmental health that underscores children’s particular vulnerability to the effects of global climate change: “Children will be among the most susceptible to more severe heat waves, more intense air pollution, and the spread of infectious diseases … Future generations will face many potential impacts of climate change with serious health, environmental and economic consequences.”⁵

The links between climate and human health are complex and not fully understood.
The US National Academy Sciences has warned "greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. ... [F]uture abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected."⁶

"It is dawning on us at last that the life of our world is as vulnerable as the children we raise."
 George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, UK



¹ Heinlein, Robert. Time Enough for Love. 1973.
² World Health Organization. Climate and Health. July 2005.
³ Is Global Warming Harmful to Health? Paul R. Epstein, Scientific American, 2000.
⁴ US Centers for Disease Control. West Nile Virus Statistics, Surveillance, and Control.
⁵ G8 Environment Ministers. 1997 Declaration of the Environment Leaders of the Eight
on Children's Environmental Health.
⁶ National Academies Press. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises (2002).

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