MIT researchers have found that warmer temperatures caused by climate change could cause increases in fatal car crashes, food safety violations and even violent crime, writes Alan Neuhauser for U.S. News. The researchers hope that their findings will, “spur agencies to consider more closely how to help their workers – whether cops or health inspectors or elsewhere – cope with the heat.”
Researchers from MIT and Harvard studied how climate change could affect food inspections, traffic accidents and police stops, and found that rising temperatures could reduce safety, reports Susan Scutti for CNN. Research scientist Nick Obradovich explains that he hopes the findings can be used to “adapt or to fix things that might go wrong under a changing climate."
In an article for NBC News about how climate change could make life unsustainable in the countries along the Persian Gulf and North Africa, Charlene Gubash highlights an MIT study showing that temperatures there and in southwest Asia, “will exceed the threshold for human survival if nations fail to reign in emissions.”
An MIT study finds that rising temperatures due to climate change will make the North China Plain uninhabitable by the end of the century, reports Newsweek’s Brendan Cole. The area could experience heat and humidity that is “so strong that it is impossible for the human body to cool itself,” Cole explains.
Axios reporter Andrew Freedman examines a new study by researchers at MIT and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology showing that China’s breadbasket, the North China Plain, could face severe heat waves. Big picture, writes Freedman, “such heat waves could both threaten lives and dampen economic output in the region, where 400 million people live.”
CNN reporter Bard Wilkinson writes that a study by MIT researchers finds that by the end of the century China’s North Plain region will experience heatwaves that could kill healthy people within six hours. Wilkinson explains that the findings are, “worrying because many of the region's 400 million people are farmers exposed to climactic conditions.”
New research by Prof. Elfatih Eltahir finds that the North China Plain could face deadly heat waves by the end of the century unless measures are taken to curb carbon emissions, reports Damian Carrington for The Guardian. Eltahir found that there already has been a, “substantial increase in extreme heatwaves on the plain in the past 50 years.”
A new study by led by Prof. Elfatih Eltahir finds that climate change could cause the North China Plain, China’s most populous agricultural region, to face deadly heatwaves by 2100, reports Isabelle Gerretsen for the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The intensity of those heatwaves means that survival of humans would be questionable,” says Eltahir.
A new study co-authored by researchers at MIT finds that, “human activities are altering Earth's seasons in a way that is creating a greater contrast between summer and winter in much of North America, Europe and Eurasia,” reports Andrew Freedman for Axios.
Prof. Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, writes for Wired about how scientists are creating new ways to develop meat-free foods. Ito writes that it’s, “feasible to imagine a system that unleashes a culinary bonanza of nutritional, flavor and texture options for future chefs while also lowering the environmental impact of belching cows, concentrated animal-feeding operations, and expensive and energy-inefficient refrigerated supply chains.”
In an article for Salon, Associate Prof. Noelle Eckley Selin and postdoc Sae Yun Kwon discuss their latest research, which examined emissions in China. They write that although mercury pollution is often associated with fish consumption, “China’s future emissions trajectory can have a measurable influence on the country’s rice methylmercury” levels, as well.
CNN’s Sophie Tatum reports that six scientists from the U.S., including a senior research scientist with MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, will join France’s new climate change initiative. The effort, notes Tatum, is meant to offer the international scientific community a chance to, “increase its efforts in battling climate change.”
Using several comparative models, a new study led by MIT researchers reveals that China’s pledge to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 could cut down on as many as 160,000 premature deaths. “Politically, the research confirms why Chinese officials have their own internal reasons to cut CO2 even though the U.S. is abandoning Paris and disengaging internationally on climate,” writes Ben Geman for Axios.
A new study finds that a 4% reduction in China's carbon emissions by 2030 could save a total of $464.5 billion in healthcare costs, writes Chase Purdy for Quartz. “We have all these policy goals for a transition toward a more sustainable society,” says Associate Prof. Noelle Selin. “Mitigating air pollution, a leading cause of death, is one of them, and avoiding dangerous climate change is another.”
New research from visiting scientist Judah Cohen suggests that “severe winter weather in the United States is often tied to (relatively) high heat in the North Pole,” writes Eleanor Cummins for Popular Science. “If the Arctic is cold, that favors less severe winter in the eastern U.S.,”said Cohen. “When the Arctic is warm, it’s the opposite relationship.”