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Advances in Climate Change Research 14 (2023) 811e813
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Editorial

An indisputable link between climate emergency and human health

Climate change is one of the greatest health challenges that climate change and human health and survival. In this special
humanity faces. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate issue of Climate Emergency and Human Health and Survival,
Change estimates that 3.3 billion people worldwide are highly we presented six articles on this topic.
vulnerable to climate change and confront greater health risks The first is an interdisciplinary systematic review on
as a consequence (IPCC, 2023). The fact that climate change advancing early warning and surveillance for zoonotic dis-
is a health issue is finally being widely recognised. For eases under climate change (Wang et al., 2023). It indicates
example, the first Health Day at a COP summit took place on 3 that zoonoses account for the majority of emerging infectious
Dec 2023 at COP28 in Dubai to showcase the links between diseases and pose a formidable threat to human and animal
health and climate change, and announced 1 billion USD of health. Zoonoses are significantly affected by climate change
funding provided for both mitigation and adaptation programs, through influencing hosts, vectors, and pathogen dynamics as
with an emphasis on the transformation of health systems, well as their interactions. It highlights that zoonoses surveil-
addressing the environmental determinants of health, and lance should be advanced by use of new technologies such as
ensuring communities and vulnerable populations are pro- remote sensing, environment-based screening, multi-omics,
tected (The Lancet, 2023). and big data science, which can facilitate comprehensive
The 2023 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and active surveillance, and improve early warning systems. The
climate change highlighted that climate change is increasingly authors discussed the opportunities, barriers, and limitations of
impacting the health and survival of people worldwide, and applying interdisciplinary emerging technologies for exploring
projections show these risks could worsen steeply with further early warning and surveillance of zoonoses.
inaction (Romanello et al., 2023). It is estimated that, The second is about a multicity and multicounty study on
compared with 1990e2000, heat-related deaths of people total and cause-specific mortality attributable to cold spells in
older than 65 years increased by 85 % in 2020. Compared with China (Song et al., 2023). Daily data were collected on
1981e2010, 127 million more people experienced moderate climate, sociodemographic factors and mortality in 18 cities/
or severe food insecurity in 2021 because of a higher fre- counties across 11 geographical regions during 2014e2018. A
quency of heatwaves and droughts. Due to climate change, distributed lag nonlinear model was used to examine the as-
more populations are at high risk of infectious diseases sociation between cold spells and mortality after adjustment
including dengue, malaria, vibriosis, and West Nile virus. for confounding factors. It is reported that cold spells were
There are profound inequities in the burden of climate significantly associated with all-cause mortality at lag 0e21 d
health risks and impacts, in the ability to adapt to climate (CRR:1.38, 95%CI:1.21,1.57). Cold spells increased mortality
change, and in access to finance, with low- and middle-income from a range of diseases such as respiratory and circulatory
countries and vulnerable and marginalized communities most system diseases, digestive, endocrine and nervous system
deeply affected.1 diseases and injury. Women, older adults and residents of rural
It is imperative to protect people from the detrimental areas and subtropical monsoon climate zone were more
health impacts of climate change. We must pursue ambitious vulnerable to the impacts of cold spells.
mitigation and adaptation goals, avoid the worst climate risks, The third focuses on economic burden of premature deaths
and build climate resilient communities. To achieve these attributable to different heatwaves, which is a multi-site study
objectives, we must understand the intuitive link between in China (Zhao et al., 2023). The authors investigated the

Peer review under responsibility of National Climate Center (China Meteorological Administration).
1
COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health 2023, https://www.cop28.com/en/cop28-uae-declaration-on-climate-and-health.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2023.12.004
1674-9278/© 2023 The Authors. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-
NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
812 Editorial / Advances in Climate Change Research 14 (2023) 811e813

economic burden of deaths associated with heatwaves of family-related information were compared between interven-
different intensities and durations and identified the vulnerable tion and control schools. After intervention, the overall KAP
populations and regions. They found 2.9 % (95%CI: 0.0 %, score increased by 2.391 (95 % CI: 1.881, 2.902) at the
6.5 %)e20.0 % (95%CI: 2.9 %, 34.2 %) of the value of sta- intervention school, which suggests that the intervention was
tistical life were attributable to heatwaves, corresponding to effective. Parental educational attainment, working status and
attributable economic losses (AELs) of 2.20 (95%CI: 0.32, the household size were among the factors that influenced
3.77)e4.77 (95%CI: 1.53, 7.63) billion CNY. Females and heatwave adaption interventions for primary school students.
people older than 65 years were more sensitive. For relatively In summary, it is abundantly clear that climate change has
low-intensity heatwaves, the AELs in the temperate zone and already affected human health and its health risks will rapidly
northern regions were larger than those in subtropical zone and increase over the coming decade if climate inaction continues.
southern regions. However, for relatively high-intensity heat- No country, community or population will be immune from
waves, the AELs in subtropical zone and southern regions climate impacts. Thus, immediate, ambitious and decisive
were relatively higher than those in temperate zone and action is urgently required to reduce the emissions of green-
northern regions. Additionally, the AELs were larger in urban house gases and to adapt to climate change because some
areas than in rural areas. climate impacts are inevitable even though we completely stop
The fourth aims to investigate the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels today.
temperature change between neighboring days (TCN) and
hospitalizations, identify diseases sensitive to extreme TCN,
Declaration of competing interest
and evaluate the related disease burden (Huang et al., 2023).
Meteorological and hospitalization data were collected from
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
2014 to 2019 in 23 sites of China. TCN was significantly
associated with all-cause hospital admissions. A negative TCN
CRediT authorship contribution statement
(below 1.9  C) in the cool season and a positive TCN (above
1.0  C) in the warm season increased the risk of hospitaliza- Xiao-Yuan Yao: Writing e review & editing. Shilu Tong:
tion. The attributable fraction to all-cause hospitalization was
Conceptualization, Writing e original draft. Hilary Bambrick:
2.05 % (95 % CI: 0.90 %, 4.53 %) for negative TCN in the
Writing e review & editing
cool season and 5.79 % (95 % CI: 2.98 %, 8.31 %) for positive
TCN in the warm season. The findings indicate that it is
important to raise the awareness of TCN and its health risks References
and to develop evidence-informed policies.
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 Editorial / Advances in Climate Change Research 14 (2023) 811e813 813

Zhao, C., Li, Y.-H., Tong, S.-L., et al., 2023. Economic burden of premature Xiao-Yuan YAO
deaths attributable to different heatwaves in China: a multi-site study, National Institute of Environmental Health, Chinese Center
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j.accre.2023.11.003.s.
for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 100021, China
*Corresponding author. National Institute of Environmental
Shilu TONG * Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
National Institute of Environmental Health, Chinese Center Beijing 100021, China.
for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 100021, China E-mail address: tongshilu@nieh.chinacdc.cn (TONG S.)
School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland
Received: 11 December 2023
University of Technology, Brisbane QLD 4001, Australia
Accepted: 12 December 2023
Hilary BAMBRICK Available online 19 December 2023
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The
Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia