Climate Change Contributing to Various Human Woes, NASA Scientist Says
People's health is being impacted, she says
Human-caused global climate change is helping cause everything from spreading human disease, to increased turbulence during air travel.
That's according to the chief scientist at NASA.
Global climate change is the warming of the planet as a result of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Scientists have long counseled that climate change has been driving the more-extreme weather events humans have been experiencing in recent decades.
But it's also responsible for other changes as well, according to Kate Calvin, NASA chief scientist and climate advisor.
“So, there are a lot of effects of climate change on health. So, in terms of mosquitoes and other diseases that are carried by insects, what the climate — what climate change can do is change where the — the geographic extent of those species,” Calvin explained. “So, you know, mosquitoes need hot conditions, they need water to breed, and so what climate change can do is change that extent so that we see, in places where you have malaria, it could shift more northern latitudes or higher altitudes.
“But there's other effects of climate change. You mentioned pollen. One of the things that we saw here in the northeast of the U.S. recently was about wildfire smoke. So, there were wildfires burning in Canada, and the smoke from that came into the U.S. and led to air quality concerns all across the northeastern U.S. and we will see more of that with climate change,” she added, during an on-camera interview Sunday on the CBS News program, Face The Nation.
Climate change can be felt in other ways, too, Calvin said.
“So, there's studies that indicate that you can see increases in turbulence linked to climate change,” she said. “At NASA, some of what we do around aircraft, we have a large aeronautics research team, but we look a lot at how transportation affects climate, so not just climate affecting transportation, but also how it affects it.
“And so we do a lot of research into making planes more efficient, so they use less energy and generate less emissions and contribute less to warming in the future."
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