Climate Change Could Significantly Spike Heat-Related Deaths In The US

If current rates of global warming are sustained, the US could see a combined 26,000 heat deaths by 2090 in 10 of its major cities, a Brown University study revealed.

The researchers studied the data of temperature-related mortality rates from the cities of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., without taking the population growth into account.

"The conversation about climate change is typically focused on the costs of mitigation, but this paper shows the human toll of policy inaction," said study senior author Gregory Wellenius, an associate professor of epidemiology at Brown's School of Public Health. "These results show the cost in terms of human lives due to just this one aspect of climate change: temperature."

A recent study from two years ago concluded that climate change could be responsible for 27,000 deaths in the US by 2100. However, the results of the Brown study indicated a sharp rise from the previous forecast.

According to the same study, in the scenario that human-made causes of the climate change are curbed, the number of heat-related deaths would be approximately 7,700 by 2050 and 10,400 by 2090.