Study.. Climate Warming Increases Heat Risks for Older Adults More Than Expected
A recent study published on Tuesday, August 18, in The Lancet Planetary Health warns that climate change will expose older adults to unprecedented and significantly more dangerous heatwaves than current projections suggest over the coming decades.
The research models, developed by a team from Stanford University in the United States, are particularly significant as their publication comes during a summer marked by unprecedented heatwaves across Europe and North America.
The researchers focused on assessing the risks posed by global warming to older adults and how they may be exposed to temperatures exceeding their physiological tolerance by 2100.
According to the researchers, previous estimates of the risks facing older people underestimated the true scale of the threat because they relied on outdated data. This discrepancy is largely linked to the “wet-bulb temperature” measure, which assesses heat danger by taking humidity into account, as the health effects of high temperatures become more severe as humidity rises.
The research team explained that previous standards used to assess the risks of humid heat were based on experiments conducted on young, healthy adults, meaning they did not adequately reflect the physiological and health conditions of older people.
Recent studies involving older age groups have shown that the risks they face under such weather conditions are significantly greater than previously believed.
By combining these new findings with projections of global population ageing and the expected increase in the number of older people, the researchers concluded that heatwaves exceeding human tolerance limits will affect larger populations, cover wider geographical areas, and persist for longer periods than previous estimates suggested.
For example, the models indicate — while accounting for methodological differences — that if global temperatures rise by 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100, 22% of people over the age of 60 could be exposed to dangerous temperatures for more than one month each year.
In this context, the researchers stressed that the countries most severely affected will be those where large segments of the population lack adequate protection from extreme heat. They called for greater access to cooling measures, including air conditioning, while emphasizing that reducing carbon emissions remains essential to limiting these risks.
