This is a great question, and it's one that's super personal for me, because I grew up in NC and still live here. 1/many
2/ When I was a kid growing up in Durham, summers were pretty hot. My brothers and I spent pretty much every afternoon in the pool to escape the heat. (RIP my fair skin.)
3/ But looking back on it, the summers back in the'90s weren't as bad as they are now. Turning on the A/C was a somewhat rare event for my family. I spent the summer of '99 living in a dorm room in Winston-Salem without A/C. It was OK.
4/ And when I checked the data collected at the RDU airport, I found out that my recollections were correct. Extremely hot days have gotten more common here.
5/ When I was a little girl, there were about eight days every summer over 95 degrees in the Raleigh-Durham area. Today, we’re averaging about 20 extremely hot days each year.
6/ In other words, the number of miserably hot days has more than doubled in my lifetime. And I’m not that old!
7/ My biggest concern for North Carolina looking forward is that we're likely to keep getting hotter. climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/d…
8/ Heat is a health problem not just because it can directly cause medical issues like heat stroke (which is certainly a worry).
9/ But it also can make people with certain chronic conditions even sicker, because heat is stressful to our bodies. I'm talking about conditions like heart disease and diabetes. Everyone knows someone with one of these conditions.
10/ Heat also tends to make air pollution worse. (Isn't that annoying?)
11/ Here in North Carolina, one my biggest concerns is ground-level ozone. It's a pollutant that we deal with every summer, especially on hot, sunny days.
12/ As the state gets hotter, we could have more ozone days. That's tough on people like me who have asthma and other lung issues.
13/ So, bottom line, my biggest health concerns are related to hotter days and more ozone pollution.
14/ I don't have numbers in front of me about the number of people who could be affected by this in NC.
15/ BUT one study estimated that extra heat waves from climate change could cause an average of 2,400 deaths every year just on the East Coast by the late 2050s.
16/ Citation: Wu J, Zhou Y, Gao Y, Fu JS, Johnson BA, Huang C, Kim YM, Liu Y. 2014. Estimation and uncertainty analysis of impacts of future heat waves on mortality in the eastern United States. Environ Health Perspect 122:10–16; dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.13…
17/ On the extra ozone pollution resulting from climate change, one study estimated that nationwide, "tens to thousands of additional ozone-related premature deaths per year" could occur by 2030.
18/ By 2030! That is uncomfortably soon.
19/ Citation: USGCRP, 2016: The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment. Crimmins, A., J. et al., Eds. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, 312 pp. health2016.globalchange.gov
20/ It doesn't have to be this way. There's plenty of things we can do, obviously and most importantly implementing policies that reduce carbon pollution.
21/ One cool thing we can also do is to get involved in community tree-planting efforts.
22/ It sounds hokey, but trees do a spectacular job of cooling their immediate area and also soaking up air pollution like ozone.
23/ So some cities are starting to plant trees as a way to help people stay healthy as the climate warms. Here's an example from Louisville. Chime in, y'all, if you know of a city in NC doing this. yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/04/louisv…
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