Climate change could mean fewer die from winter cold

CLIMATE change may bring unexpected benefits for Britain because fewer people will die from the cold during the winter, a study suggests.

Although death rates will soar in many regions of the world as the climate heats up, in northern Europe hot weather mortality will be cancelled out by the fall in cold weather deaths.

In bad years, nearly 50,000 more people die during the winter in Britain compared with the warmer months.

But the new research suggests that cold-related mortality will fall by between 32 and 50 per cent if the worstcase climate change scenarios occur by the end of the century. While the current 2,000 excess summer deaths are expected to rise between seven and five-fold, they would be cancelled out by the fall in winter mortality.

Antonio Gasparrini, an associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “Although previous studies have shown a potential rise in heat-related mortality, little was known about the extent to which this increase would be balanced by a reduction in cold-related deaths.”

The research, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, is the largest study to date to look at the health impacts of global temperature rises.