• Energy Research

Climate variables impact human health and in an era of climate change, there is a pressing need to understand these relationships to best inform how such impacts are likely to change.This study sought to investigate time series of daily admissions from two public hospitals in Limpopo province in South Africa with climate variability and air quality.We used wavelet transform cross-correlation analysis to monitor coincidences in changes of meteorological (temperature and rainfall) and air quality (concentrations of PM2.5 and NO2) variables with admissions to hospitals for gastrointestinal illnesses including diarrhoea, pneumonia-related diagnosis, malaria and asthma cases. We were interested to disentangle meteorological or environmental variables that might be associated with underlying temporal variations of disease prevalence measured through visits to hospitals.We found preconditioning of prevalence of pneumonia by changes in air quality and showed that malaria in South Africa is a multivariate event, initiated by co-occurrence of heat and rainfall. We provided new statistical estimates of time delays between the change of weather or air pollution and increase of hospital admissions for pneumonia and malaria that are addition to already known seasonal variations. We found that increase of prevalence of pneumonia follows changes in air quality after a time period of 10 to 15 days, while the increase of incidence of malaria follows the co-occurrence of high temperature and rainfall after a 30-day interval.Our findings have relevance for early warning system development and climate change adaptation planning to protect human health and well-being.

Climate variables impact human health and in an era of climate change, there is a pressing need to understand these relationships to best inform how such impacts are likely to change.This study sought to investigate time series of daily admissions from two public hospitals in Limpopo province in South Africa with climate variability and air quality.We used wavelet transform cross-correlation analysis to monitor coincidences in changes of meteorological (temperature and rainfall) and air quality (concentrations of PM2.5 and NO2) variables with admissions to hospitals for gastrointestinal illnesses including diarrhoea, pneumonia-related diagnosis, malaria and asthma cases. We were interested to disentangle meteorological or environmental variables that might be associated with underlying temporal variations of disease prevalence measured through visits to hospitals.We found preconditioning of prevalence of pneumonia by changes in air quality and showed that malaria in South Africa is a multivariate event, initiated by co-occurrence of heat and rainfall. We provided new statistical estimates of time delays between the change of weather or air pollution and increase of hospital admissions for pneumonia and malaria that are addition to already known seasonal variations. We found that increase of prevalence of pneumonia follows changes in air quality after a time period of 10 to 15 days, while the increase of incidence of malaria follows the co-occurrence of high temperature and rainfall after a 30-day interval.Our findings have relevance for early warning system development and climate change adaptation planning to protect human health and well-being.

Coastal zone is of great importance in the provision of various valuable ecosystem services. However, it is also sensitive and vulnerable to environmental changes due to high human populations and interactions between the land and ocean. Major threats of pollution from over enrichment of nutrients, increasing metals and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and climate change have led to severe ecological degradation in the coastal zone, while few studies have focused on the combined impacts of pollution and climate change on the coastal ecosystems at the global level. A global overview of nutrients, metals, POPs, and major environmental changes due to climate change and their impacts on coastal ecosystems was carried out in this study. Coasts of the Eastern Atlantic and Western Pacific were hotspots of concentrations of several pollutants, and mostly affected by warming climate. These hotspots shared the same features of large populations, heavy industry and (semi-) closed sea. Estimation of coastal ocean capital, integrated management of land-ocean interaction in the coastal zone, enhancement of integrated global observation system, and coastal ecosystem-based management can play effective roles in promoting sustainable management of coastal marine ecosystems. Enhanced management from the perspective of mitigating pollution and climate change was proposed.

Coastal zone is of great importance in the provision of various valuable ecosystem services. However, it is also sensitive and vulnerable to environmental changes due to high human populations and interactions between the land and ocean. Major threats of pollution from over enrichment of nutrients, increasing metals and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and climate change have led to severe ecological degradation in the coastal zone, while few studies have focused on the combined impacts of pollution and climate change on the coastal ecosystems at the global level. A global overview of nutrients, metals, POPs, and major environmental changes due to climate change and their impacts on coastal ecosystems was carried out in this study. Coasts of the Eastern Atlantic and Western Pacific were hotspots of concentrations of several pollutants, and mostly affected by warming climate. These hotspots shared the same features of large populations, heavy industry and (semi-) closed sea. Estimation of coastal ocean capital, integrated management of land-ocean interaction in the coastal zone, enhancement of integrated global observation system, and coastal ecosystem-based management can play effective roles in promoting sustainable management of coastal marine ecosystems. Enhanced management from the perspective of mitigating pollution and climate change was proposed.

Concern and general awareness about the impacts of climate change in all sectors of the social-ecological-economic system is growing as a result of improved climate science products and information, as well as increased media coverage of the apparent manifestations of the phenomenon in our society. However, scales of climate variability and change, in space and time, are often confused and so attribution of impacts on various sectors, including the health sector, can be misunderstood and misrepresented. In this review, we assess the mechanistic links between climate and infectious diseases in particular, and consider how this relationship varies, and may vary according to different time scales, especially for aetiologically climate-linked diseases. While climate varies in the medium (inter-annual) time frame, this variability itself may be oscillating and/or trending on cyclical and long-term (climate change) scales because of regional and global scale climate phenomena such as the El-Nino southern oscillation coupled with global-warming drivers of climate change. As several studies have shown, quantifying and modelling these linkages and associations at appropriate time and space scales is both necessary and increasingly feasible with improved climate science products and better epidemiological data. The application of this approach is considered for South Africa, and the need for a more concerted effort in this regard is supported.

Concern and general awareness about the impacts of climate change in all sectors of the social-ecological-economic system is growing as a result of improved climate science products and information, as well as increased media coverage of the apparent manifestations of the phenomenon in our society. However, scales of climate variability and change, in space and time, are often confused and so attribution of impacts on various sectors, including the health sector, can be misunderstood and misrepresented. In this review, we assess the mechanistic links between climate and infectious diseases in particular, and consider how this relationship varies, and may vary according to different time scales, especially for aetiologically climate-linked diseases. While climate varies in the medium (inter-annual) time frame, this variability itself may be oscillating and/or trending on cyclical and long-term (climate change) scales because of regional and global scale climate phenomena such as the El-Nino southern oscillation coupled with global-warming drivers of climate change. As several studies have shown, quantifying and modelling these linkages and associations at appropriate time and space scales is both necessary and increasingly feasible with improved climate science products and better epidemiological data. The application of this approach is considered for South Africa, and the need for a more concerted effort in this regard is supported.