A recent Nature Communications study reported that by 2050, up to 246 million people, or 23% of the global population older than 69 years will be exposed to dangerous acute heat — especially older adults living in Asia and Africa will bear the brunt of the most severe global warming impacts.
Today, 14% of the global population aged over 69 live in regions where the daily maximum temperature exceeds the critical threshold of 37.5 degrees Celsius. “Climate change has potentially dire consequences for the health and well-being of older adults. Increases in the intensity, duration, and frequency of heat spells pose direct threats to physical health and mortality risk, with especially severe consequences for older adults, given their heightened susceptibility to hyperthermia and common health conditions worsened by heat exposure such as cardiovascular disease,” the authors explained.
“Tragedies like the heat-related deaths of Florida nursing home residents following an extensive power outage during Hurricane Irma in 2017, the deaths of thousands of older adults in 21 European nations during the August 2022 heatwave, and the 3500 deaths – mostly among older adults – during the 2015 heatwave in India and Pakistan, highlight the threats posed by climate change-driven increases in ambient temperatures,” they added.
While in 2021 the global population of people above 60 was 1.1 billion, that number is expected to increase to 2.1 billion by 2050. Two-thirds of them will reside in low and middle-income countries where not only are climate change-induced heatwaves more likely to occur, but they are also far more likely to be economically disadvantaged older adults who live in poorly ventilated houses without access to cooling systems.
“Increases in age 69+ populations are observed in all regions, consistent with past studies of global population aging, but they are concentrated in primarily low-income nations in the Global South, concentrated in Africa, Asia, and South America,” lead author Giacomo Falchetta from the CMCC Foundation in Italy and colleagues observed. “Asia will experience levels of older adult heat exposure nearly four times higher than the other regions put together due both to its large, aging population and hot climate.”
“Cumulative heat exposure of older individuals will at least triplicate in all continents by 2050. Climate change will be the prevailing mechanism of change in more temperate nations of Europe and North America. Population aging will be the defining driver of future exposure in the warmer countries of Africa, Asia, and South America. Africa is also the region where total population growth will have the largest impact,” they added.
The authors further explained that the next decade will be “critical” for addressing both, climate change and healthy aging. One intervention to prevent heat-related deaths is for governments and other stakeholders to prioritize increasing the penetration of air-conditioning and other cooling techniques in buildings — that includes increasing green spaces and tree canopy cover in urban and semi-urban to prevent the urban heat island effect from taking place. Other than that, they recommended expanding heat early warning systems and providing free and accessible public cooling spaces.