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Burden of climate change on children  

30th September, 2021 ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

      

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Context: In a study published in the journal Science, researchers have found that children born today will be hit much harder by extreme climate events than today’s adults.

 

Key findings of report:

  • During his or her lifetime, a child born in 2021 is likely to experience on average twice as many wildfires, two to three times more droughts, almost three times more river floods and crop failures and about seven times more heat waves compared to a person who is, say, 60 years old today.
  • The study is based on data from the Inter-sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP).
  • This is a community-driven climate-impacts modelling initiative that assess the differential impacts of climate change.
  • The ISIMIP data were used alongside country-scale, life-expectancy data, population data and temperature trajectories from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
  • Under a scenario of current “insufficient” climate policies, dangerous extreme heatwave events, which affect about 15% of the global land area today, could treble to 46% by the end of this century.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/the-burden-of-climate-change-on-children-born-today-7540538/