Can extreme heat speed up aging in older adults?

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AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the March 7 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00We're covering a couple of interesting climate stories today, starting with the impact of

00:05heat on aging populations, and then turning to some new science on how to better manage

00:11our forests from wildfires, starting with the story, Brett, from USC Leonard Davis School

00:17that focuses not on chronological age, but on biological age and how that seems to advance

00:22more rapidly for people who live in areas that are more prone to heat, right?

00:27Yeah, especially older people above the age of 56.

00:31That's what they studied.

00:32So biological age measures how well the body functions at a molecular level, also a cellular

00:38and system level.

00:39So compared to chronological, which is just the birth date, what they're seeing is areas,

00:44neighborhoods that experience more extreme heat, higher heat indices, are seeing an acceleration

00:51of their biological age across southern portions of the United States.

00:54Yeah, I think one of the interesting things about this study, too, is that it was not

00:57just accumulation over time living in a certain place.

01:01It actually seemed like there might be some short-term effects if you are exposed to significant

01:04heat.

01:05Even for a couple days, it may start to raise your biological age more quickly, right?

01:09Yeah, absolutely, and that's certainly a big problem.

01:12And the other problem is we're seeing more and more older people, retirees, moving to

01:17the southern states.

01:18That continues.

01:19So unless we see a reverse of climate change, which we do not expect, this could become

01:25a growing problem across the southern United States and expanding northward.

01:30Certainly a need to continue to make sure you stay inside at the hottest times of day

01:34and drink plenty of fluids if you live in areas that are significantly hotter.

01:38Moving to our next story from Florida Atlantic University, and that focuses on how we try

01:43to mitigate wildfires, and this is a bit of a new area of science where it talks about

01:47harvesting the wood without burning it.

01:51Yeah, absolutely.

01:52You know, normally, in recent time, we've been doing prescribed burns, which can get

01:57out of control, produce a lot of carbon, smoke, and whatnot.

02:00So this study looked at what's the best way to control these wildfires, limit the size

02:07of these wildfires, and what they found was, in addition to thinning forests, also cleaning

02:13up the dead debris that we see accumulating in these forests.

02:17And one of the things that was also interesting was the idea of transforming the wood, harvesting

02:22the wood without combusting it, and then transforming it into something that could be actually a

02:26carbon storing product, a carbon sink to take that carbon out of the atmosphere.

02:30Yeah, absolutely.

02:31That's certainly one way to do that.

02:32In the past, certainly Native Americans utilized a lot of this dead debris for shelter, tools,

02:39firewood, but now that's not happening anymore.

02:42So that's certainly a big change that's been going on.

02:45So what they found is that, again, the harvesting of dead wood greatly reduced the intensity

02:52of these fires and the size of these fires.

02:54Certainly some new science there and new methods to try to mitigate wildfires and reduce their

02:59impact.

03:00Thank you, Brett, for that.

03:01For more information on those stories and other climate information, you can find that

03:03at AccuWeather.com slash climate.

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