A Model of Climate Change and Public Health

Abstract

Climate change, a result of the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels, may influence public health in innumerable ways including a risk of increased frequency and intensity of heat waves, reduction in cold-related deaths, increase in extreme weather events, changes in the distribution of water-, food-, and vector-borne diseases, and a risk of malnutrition, especially in the poor. These combined effects negatively impact public health (Haines, Kovats, Campbell-Lendrum, & Corvalan, 2006). In contrast, an improvement in public health requires much input of natural and human-built resources, which should raise the emissions of CO2 even more and thus result in an increase in global temperature. Based on this interaction between climate change and public health, a semi-empirical model was built. After that, the model was calibrated with data collected between 1901 and 1960. During the calibration, climate change was represented by global average temperature while public health was represented by life expectancy at birth. Finally, the calibrated model was validated with data from 1961 to 2005. Agreement between the results and the observation data is remarkable, with almost all relative errors less than 6%. The model of climate change and public health can be used to predict trends in climate change and public health and also provide insights into strategies for controlling the rise in temperature and improving public health.