“The heat at night was too much; we couldn’t sleep,” says Evanice Auxiliadora da Silva, a resident of Cuiabá, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso in west-central Brazil, as she recalls the numerous heat waves the city experienced last year — which was also the planet’s hottest year on record. In 2023, a surge of extreme weather events were recorded, including heat waves, whose impacts range from temporary lifestyle changes to adverse health consequences, even death. Worldwide, scientists are scrambling to study these extreme events and their danger to human beings, as the world continues to warm due to human-caused climate change. Auxiliadora da Silva’s city comprises a set of Brazilian metropolitan regions whose experience with heat waves has been analyzed in a newly published study in the journal PLOS ONE. The paper helps fill a gap in South America, a continent that scientists say still lacks research on the impact of temperature extremes on health. The study estimates that the deaths of nearly 50,000 people in the continent’s largest country over nearly two decades can be attributed to the occurrence of heat waves. And the paper points out that these extreme events have become increasingly frequent, intense and prolonged. The study quantifies the impact of heat waves in Brazil and analyzes how socioeconomic factors influence the risk of heat-related illnesses. The researchers further suggest that the impacts of extreme heat, which affects the lives of thousands of people annually, are felt unevenly, thus exposing socioeconomic inequalities. Auxiliadora…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Study on Brazilian heat wave deaths shows gender & racial disparities appeared first on EnviroLink Network.