Week 6 - Effects of climate change on Humans

This week we covered the topics of urban heat island and food security.

Urban heat islands
Here we looked at the way cities tend to be several degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside making heatwaves all the more dangerous. Heat islands are caused by large and/or densely packed buildings absorbing and re-radiating heat, whilst there's little to cool things off (like open spaces, woodland, circulating air, and evaporating water).

70,000 people died in Europe's 2003 heatwave. Most deaths occured at night near the top of tall buildings. At night, because people would normally get the chance to cool down then but can't during a heatwave. At the top of tall buildings because they store more heat and heat rises...

Given that the world's population is tending to migrate towards cities (I believe some 50% or more will be living in cities by mid-century) this problem can only get worse in a warming world unless some way of reducing the effect is found.

Food security
Pests and diseases are on the increase thanks to climate change. We depend on 3 main crops, if these pathogens sweep through any one of these (in a similar way to Ash Die-back, Dutch Elm Disease, and Acute Oak Decline) and there'd be mass-starvation, food riots and, in the developed countries food inflation.

This too is set to be more of a threat as the world population increases to around 9.2 billion by mid-century: We may need to double crop yields by then to keep up with the demands of the increasing population, especially the growing middle classes.

Climate change, rising sea levels, mass extinctions, urban heat islands, ocean acidification, over population, water scarcity, and mass starvation. That's what our kids have got to look forward to.