Your Health and a Changing Climate: Newsletter - Volume 6, January 2008

International Activities

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - 4th Assessment of Climate Change

On May 21, 2007 the Intergovern mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a draft version of the Synthesis Report of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report to participating governments. The 4th Assessment provides a review of the 'state-of-the-art' in climate change science for the purposes of understanding the scientific basis of risk of humaninduced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

Among the key findings identified by the Synthesis Report are:

• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
  
  
• Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
  
  
• The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, insects, wildfire) and other global drivers (e.g., land use change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources).
  
  
• Increased deaths, disease, and injury due to heat waves, floods, storms, fires and drought.
  
  
• Increased frequency of cardio-respiratory diseases due to higher concentrations of ground level ozone related to climate change.
  
  
• Green house gas concentrations in the atmosphere should be limited to between 445 parts per million (ppm) and 650 ppm to avoid dangerous climate change.
  
  
• Achieving target concentrations between 445 ppm and 535 ppm should cost less than 3% of global GDP.

EuroHEAT Project - Improving Public Health Responses to Extreme Weather/Heat-waves

The first decade of the 21st Century has seen Europe experience a succession of heat waves that have resulted in substantial death tolls, with the 2003 heat wave being the most oft-cited and stark example where 35,000 people are estimated to have died.

EuroHEAT is financed by the Euro pean Commission and co-ordinated by the World Health Organisation/Europe.

The objectives of the EuroHEAT project are to:

• carry out epidemiological assessment of the health impacts of heat-waves from 1990 to 2003;
  
  
• identify synergies with air pollution, determinants of risk, and systems for rapid detection of health impacts;
  
  
• develop a climate information tool, and measures for indoor heat protection;
  
  
• assess the health system response capacity; and
  
  
• carry out health promotion activities in particular in the ageing population.
  
  
• The EuroHEAT project has produced a range of publications on extreme weather events, specifically heat waves.

>>> For more information visit: www.euro.who.int/globalchange/Topics/20050524_2

Map Showing Heat Wave Across Europe in the Summer of 2003

© Crown copyright 2008, data supplied by the Met Office

>>> For further information about this event, visit http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/ anniversary/records2003.html