#Death by degrees ost skin#

sea level rise that is damaging the roads they have to invest dollars,' he says. 'For instance, in Miami right now, to deal with the. Wealthy nations, Professor Mora says, are far from immune. Studies have shown that race and class are key factors in susceptibility to the worst effects of climate change, from the proximity to green spaces to exposure to air pollution.Д«ut even in developed nations, extreme heat reveals in the starkest terms some of our cities' deep inequalities.

The effects of severe weather of course are not evenly distributed developing countries are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures.

Train tracks can buckle when they expand in severe heat. 'They use different coolants in those places to adapt to those circumstances but it still becomes an issue of cost, of retrofitting those areas and it is still a very practical issue.' 'But even then when you retrofit a warmer climate, the air conditioning that they use in places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi is different to the air conditioning that use in Australia,' he says. the density of the air is not sufficient for these planes to take off.'ДЄdapting our cities to these new extremes is a costly exercise, particularly in places like Europe with very old infrastructure, Professor Amati believes. 'In the US, for example, in any temperature that is above 110F, planes cannot fly because. 'In some places the wires start melting because it just gets too hot at the moment when everybody is turning on their air conditioners - as a result they touch each other and create these massive blackouts. 'We see not only damage to the railroads but concrete also cracks so then you have roads that need to be fixed,' he says. In July this year a heatwave that swept across Quebec in Canada killed over 90 people in just over a week.ДЄ devastating mortality rate, according to Professor Mora, that pales in comparison to the more than 60,000 heat-related deaths during Europe's 2003 heatwave.Д«ut, he says, the health impact is only one of many consequences including crippling infrastructure and economic paralysis. ABC Emergency has a checklist of things you can do to be ready. Heatwaves kill far more people than other natural disasters. Professor Mora says his research shows that by the end of the century over half the world's population will be exposed to this kind of deadly heat for at least 20 days a year. 'The cells start attacking these particles inside your body, creating coagulations that eventually clog the kidneys and parts of the lungs.' Health, infrastructure and economic consequences a condition called blood poisoning,' he says. 'When hot conditions last for too long you deprive certain organs of blood, specifically the gut and the lining of the gut breaks.

#Death by degrees ost skin#

One of those mechanisms, he says, sends blood to the skin so that through the process of sweat evaporation, the blood can cool down. 'We have an optimum temperature that is around 37 degrees so every time that it's hot the body wants to activate mechanisms to cool down.'

'Extreme heat is an abnormal condition for the body,' he says. Heatwaves in Australia explained (ABC Weather)ДЄssociate Professor Camilo Mora, from the University of Hawaii, says the threshold at which heat becomes deadly can vary, but a growing percentage of the world's population is now exposed to conditions exceeding that limit.