Home
Join
Inches
About
Inches
Inches
Activities
News
Main Goals
Associates
Support
Site
Index
CLIMATE CHANGE: Warming Could Spur Childhood Diarrhea
Warmer temperatures from the El Nino weather phenomenon -- already linked to higher rates of malaria, cholera and dengue fever -- appear to have also caused more cases of childhood diarrhea, scientists say.
The research, published this week in The Lancet medical journal, suggests that global warming could cause the same trend. The disease, caused by bacteria, parasites or viruses, already kills an estimated 3 million children every year and sickens millions more, especially in developing countries.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore studied records of more than 57,000 children in Lima, Peru, and found that the number of children brought to clinics there daily in the winter of 1997-98 was double what it would have been had El Nino not occurred. Over a five-year period from 1993 to 1998, the scientists found an 8% increase in childhood diarrhea for every 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature, regardless of whether it was summer or winter.
(Associated Press/CNN Interactive, 3 Feb).Health services need to adapt to expected climate changes, especially given the evidence pointing to global warming, the researchers said.
(BBC Online, 4 Feb)Predicting Species' Reaction To Warming
A warming world may benefit some species and harm others, according to research published in the journal Science.
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, looked at the effect of climate cycles on a population of dippers, the national bird, between 1978 and 1997. They found that the birds' population had dropped in cold years and risen in warm years, but had risen overall.
Another team of scientists from the University of Oslo analyzed 15 years of data on northern mammals and found that nine of 11 hoofed species declined after warm winters because of short-term population booms and subsequently increased competition for food.
Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas at Austin analyzed distribution patterns of 57 non-migratory butterfly species in Europe, and found that about two-thirds have moved their ranges northward by as much as 240 kilometers in the last century. Parmesan: "We ruled out all other obvious factors, such as habitat change, that could alter distributions. The only other factor that correlated was climate"
(Alex Kirby, BBC, 3 Feb)"Supervolcanoes" Could Trigger Global Cooling
Meanwhile, geologists "say there is a real risk that sooner or later a supervolcano will erupt with devastating force" somewhere in the world, "sending temperatures plunging on a hemispheric or even global scale."
According to a report on the BBC Two program Horizon, one supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park in the United States is about 40,000 years overdue for a major eruption. Bill McGuire of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Center at University College, London, says supervolcanoes can throw enough ash and gases into the atmosphere to cause a global cooling of as much as three to 10 degrees Celsius.
(Alex Kirby, BBC, 3 Feb)