1. Global Climate Change: Health Risks
and Preventive Strategies
By Dr Nik Nor Ronaidi bin Nik Mahdi

2. Content
1. Summary of global climate change
2. Possible risks to human health
3. What are the main risks to human health / health
impact?
4. Action taken previously and currently to prevent /
mitigate the health risks / health impact
5. Possible actions to prevent /lessen the health
impact related to global climate change
6. Roles for doctors and other health professionals to
reduce health risk

3. Summary of global climate change

4. Weather and Climate
What is weather?
•Weather is the state of atmospheric conditions (i.e., hot/cold, wet/dry,
calm/stormy, sunny/cloudy) that exist over relatively short periods of time
(hours to a couple of days).
•Weather includes the passing of a thunderstorm, hurricane, or blizzard, and
the persistence of a heat wave, or a cold snap.
What is Climate?
•Climate is the weather we expect over the period of a month, a season, a
decade, or a century.
•More technically, climate is defined as the weather conditions resulting from
the mean state of the atmosphere-ocean-land system, often described in terms
of "climate normals" or average weather conditions.

5. Climate Change is…
• Any significant change in measures of climate
(such as temperature, precipitation, or wind)
lasting for an extended period (decades or
longer).
– When due to natural processes, it is usually referred to as global climate
variability
– Usually refers to changes forced by human activities that change the
atmosphere

6. Global warming is…
• …the increase in the average surface air
temperature of the planet that is a result of the
buildup of heat-trapping or "greenhouse" gases in
the atmosphere.

7. Climate Change or Global Warming?
• The term CLIMATE CHANGE is often used
interchangeably with GLOBAL WARMING.
• The phrase 'climate change‘ is growing in
preferred use to 'global warming' because it
convey there are other changes in addition to
rising temperatures.”
(National Academy of Sciences)

8. Climate Change Is Happening Now.
• Warming of the global climate is clear and is
shown by
– increases in global average air and ocean
temperatures,
– widespread melting of snow and ice
– rising global average sea level
– the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred
since 1990.

9. How do we know?
Scientists learn about the past climate conditions from such things as tree ring
analysis, fossil evidence, and analysis of patterns and chemical composition in
coral skeletons and ice cores.

10. What causes Earth’s climate to
change?
Natural causes:
• Variations in the Earth's orbital characteristics.
• Atmospheric carbon dioxide variations.
• Volcanic eruptions
• Variations in solar output.
Anthropogenic:
 Human activities – any activity that releases
“greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere

11. The Greenhouse Effect
• The Earth receives ultraviolet (UV) radiation from
the sun, absorbs it, and then radiates the energy
out as infrared radiation
• The Earth is warmer because our atmosphere traps
some of the outgoing IR radiation. This is a natural
process known as the greenhouse effect.
• The greenhouse effect is a good thing, without it
the Earth would become too cold for life to exist.
• However, man’s activities appear to be altering the
natural balance.

13. Greenhouse Gasses
• Greenhouse gases are atmospheric gases that trap infrared
radiation emitted from the earth.
• Most of the significant greenhouse gases are long-lived and well-
mixed:
• Long-lived means they are chemically stable and therefore last
years in the atmosphere
• Well-mixed means they are evenly distributed in the
atmosphere.
• This family includes carbon dioxide, methane, oxides of
nitrogen, and halocarbons.
• Water vapor is a greenhouse gas that is neither well-mixed nor
long-lived. Because of this, its overall effect on global warming is
the least understood.

14. Greenhouse gases
Carbon dioxide
Nitrous oxide
Methane
Water Sulfur hexafluoride

16. Possible risks to human health

17. Modulating Health effects
Health Effects
influences
Temperature-related
Temperature -related
illness and death
Extreme weather-
Extreme(floods, -
related weather storms,
related health effects
etc.) health effects
Human
Air pollution-related
Air pollution-related
exposures health effects
Regional weather Microbial changes:
Contamination
Water and food-borne
Water and food-borne
Climate changes pathways
Contamination paths diseases
Change
• eat waves
H Transmission dynamics
Transmission
Vectorborne and
-
Extreme weather
• dynamics rodentborne diseases
borne diseases
rodent-
• emperature
T
•
Precipitation
Changes in agro- Effects of food and
•Sea-level ecosystems, hydrology water shortages
rise
Socioeconomic and Mental, nutritional,
demographic disruption infectious-disease
and other effects

18. THANK YOU