Rising temperatures tied to reduced sleep

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Vice President of Forecast Operations Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the December 12 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00Today we'll look at two new studies about how heat impacts human health.

00:05Brad, our first study is from the Keck School of Medicine at USC that focused on temperatures,

00:10especially overnight temperatures, and the negative impact on sleep.

00:14Absolutely, and I know personally I do not like a hot bedroom, so I like it nice and

00:20cool.

00:21But studies very interesting found that, again, sleep length was clearly reduced in hot weather,

00:28especially along the west coast of the United States, mostly impacting people with chronic

00:33health issues, lower socioeconomic status.

00:38Females were more likely than males to be affected, and Hispanics.

00:41Talk a bit about how they did this study and what type of time period they looked at and

00:45how they came up with this data.

00:46Yeah, so they collected data from 2010 through 2022, analyzed 12 million nights of sleep.

00:54That's a lot of sleep, by all I know of that.

00:56So what they found was by 2099, average loss of sleep could be as much as 8 to 24 hours

01:03each year, which doesn't sound like much, but let's break it down further.

01:06Let's break it down by the warm months.

01:08We have about 3 or 4 warm months, so that comes out to about 4 to 12 minutes per day of sleep

01:12loss.

01:13And that may not just be every day.

01:14There may be some days that are hotter, which you might lose more sleep in.

01:17And obviously heat or temperature, rather, of the environment is very important to sleep

01:22and how the body reacts during sleep, right?

01:23Yeah, absolutely.

01:24Very, very important.

01:25It prevents the body from cooling down, of course.

01:27And then when you do that, you reduce your deep sleep, reduce REM sleep, and that leads

01:33to more health issues, potentially.

01:35So certainly some mitigation areas that need to be focused on more green space, more air

01:39conditioning, heat resistant, building design, all ideas to help continue to mitigate impacts

01:44of a warming world on overnight temperatures.

01:47Our second study from New York University on excessive heat and young child development

01:51and how it negatively impacts the development, especially in that 3 to 4 year old range.

01:55Yeah, 3 to 4 year old, very critical age for development here.

01:58And what they found was children exposed to average temperatures above 86 degrees Fahrenheit

02:04were 5 to 6.7% less likely to meet developmental milestones such as reading and numbers.

02:13So that's very interesting.

02:14That is a very interesting finding from the study.

02:16Where did they look at, or what countries were studied, and what types of data did they use?

02:19Yeah, several countries in Africa, Gambia, Georgia, Madagascar, and again, not all in

02:25Africa.

02:26Spread it out a bit.

02:27But again, countries that were typically very warm.

02:30And that certainly is going to have a life, or could have a lifelong impact on children.

02:35That 3 to 4 year old time period, a very important one for milestones and can have a large lifelong

02:39impact on well-being too.

02:41Yeah.

02:42And again, they found the areas where they're most susceptible to these issues, urban areas,

02:47areas with less access to clean water.

02:49It certainly seems like we find that a lot in a lot of studies that we cover here on this

02:53show is that lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately impacted by these impacts of climate change.

02:59Right.

03:00Spread for that insight.

03:01For other stories about climate, you can find that at AccuWeather.com slash climate.

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