🧬 Climate Change is Making Us Age Faster

🧬 Climate Change is Making Us Age Faster

As the world continues to warm, a new study found that exposure to increased temperatures can age a person as much as smoking and drinking. Heat is notorious for short term health issues such as heat stroke and heart problems. But now, prolonged heat exposure has been shown to modify how people’s genes behave, speeding up aging at the molecular level and potentially impacting people’s long-term health. The study revealed that people who lived in areas with temperatures above 90 degrees for more than half the year looked biologically about 14 months older than similar people living in cooler places where fewer than 10 days per year exceeded that threshold. Research shows that premature aging is linked to an earlier onset of health issues like dementia, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Alejandra Borunda, NPR

🚙 EV Performance in Various Weather Conditions

As electric vehicles become more popular as a way to combat climate change, Vaisala, a global leader in measurement instruments and intelligence for climate action, studied how various weather conditions impacted the range of EVs in the United States. Their research shows that in general, EV batteries perform better in warm weather due to the lower air density compared to cold air. However, when temperatures soar too high, battery performance drops due to having to use more power to cool the batteries and the vehicle cabin. During cold snaps and snowy/icy conditions, EV performance dropped due to the increased energy demand and increased rolling resistance. Higher altitudes provide favorable ranges due to lower air density and less drag. Wind can have either a positive or negative impact, depending on the speed and direction compared to the direction of travel. The overall best place to drive an EV was in New Mexico, while the worst performance was found in North Dakota.

Vaisala

🌏 State of the Global Climate 2024 Report

The World Meteorological Organization released its annual State of the Climate 2024 report last week. The report confirms that 2024 was the hottest year ever on record, and that the top 10 hottest years ever were all in the past decade. Planet-heating carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at an 800,000 year high. The report attributes most of the heating to human activities such as burning of coal, oil, and gas, and attributes a smaller part to the naturally occurring El Nino weather phenomenon that formed in June 2023 and dissipated a little over a year later. In 2024, the world surpassed the 1.5C limit for the first time. Scientists say this was not a breach of the climate goal because it was only for a single year and not a more consistent warming over a longer time period. The report states that global heating is contributing to more extreme weather events that have led the highest levels of displacement for 16 years, and is also contributing to worsening food crises and massive economic losses. There were at least 151 “unprecedented” extreme weather events in 2024 alone.

World Meteorological Organization