Impact Of Climate Change On Children:
In a study published in the journal Science, researchers have found that children born today will be hit much harder by extreme climate events than today’s adults.
- During his or her lifetime, a child born in 2021 is likely to experience on average twice as many wildfires, two to three times more droughts, almost three times more river floods and crop failures and about seven times more heat waves compared to a person who is, say, 60 years old today.
- Under a scenario of current “insufficient” climate policies, dangerous extreme heatwave events, which affect about 15% of the global land area today, could treble to 46% by the end of this century.
- However, if countries are able to follow through with their climate policies as decided under the Paris Climate Agreement, this effect could be limited to 22%, which is just seven percentage points more than the global land area that is affected today.
- In terms of experiencing droughts, heatwaves, river floods and crop failures, people under the age of 40 today will live what the researchers call “an unprecedented life”.
Inter-sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP)
- The study is based on data from the Inter-sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP).
- This is a community-driven climate-impacts modelling initiative that assess the differential impacts of climate change.
- The ISIMIP data were used alongside country-scale, life-expectancy data, population data and temperature trajectories from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
