WWF Climate Change
Campaign
Director Adam Markham
c/o World Wildlife Fund-US
1250 Twenty-fourth St., NW
Washington, DC 20037
Tel: (202) 861-8388
Fax: (202) 331-2391
E-mail: climate@wwf.org
Visit our website at :

http://www.panda.org

limate change has two aspects: a global warming trend and greater weather variability (i.e. more extreme weather events). Since the late 1800s, a global warming trend has been documented many climatologists project more intense heatwaves and extreme precipitation to accompany that trend. Statistics from the United States National Climatic Data Center, indicate that extreme weather events have increased in the United States, Northern Australia and the former Soviet Union since the 1970s.

Extreme events, such as droughts, floods, storms and fires, directly cause death and injury themselves and can contribute to conditions that can be devastating to our health. Heatwaves and winter storms both cause an upsurge in cardiac and respiratory deaths. Floods soak agricultural fields, cre-ating pools and filling ditches, thereby increasing fungal growth and providing new breeding sites for disease carrying insects. Floods also can spread microorganisms that cause diarrhea by contaminating clean water sources with sewage runoff and overflow. Prolonged droughts punctuated by heavy rains favor growth in insect and rodent populations by providing food and breeding sites.

Heatwaves are unhealthy for humans and wildlife. Many climate change scenarios project more prolonged and intense heatwaves. In the summer of 1995, increased deaths from heatwaves occurred across the world from the India to the United States. In the Chicago area, hundreds died from the intense heatwave that gripped the region. Also in 1995, in Colombia, South America, a June heatwave and the heaviest August rainfall in 50 years, precipitated a cluster of diseases involving mosquitoes (dengue and Venezuelan equine encephalitis), rodents (leptospirosis), and toxic algae. The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report asserts that the frequency of very hot days is likely to increase, resulting in an approximate doubling of heat-related deaths in affected cities.

More frequent, warmer weather means more frequent, adverse effects. Swimmers itch (cercarial dermatitis), a disease that is of particular concern for children during the summer vacation, could become more prevalent in North America and Europe. Tetanus bacteria thrive in warmer soils as do many fungi, such as the one that causes San Joaquin Valley fever. Warming of over-land water pipes is also of concern. Australia suffers from a seasonal problem of amoebic meningoencephalitis which proliferates in warm inland water in summer. The predicted warming of night-time temperatures will be crucial for insect survival and will allow the range of many disease vectors to expand significantly. In New Orleans, for example, five years without a killing frost (1990 to 1995) allowed an explosion of mosquitoes, termites and cockroaches.