Heat stress severely impacting children under 9 - report

Children under the age of nine are suffering severe impacts on their health and development due to alarming levels of humid heat caused by human-induced climate change.

That is the finding from a new study by the Global Strategic Communications Council (GSCC), which is an international, collaborative network of communications professionals in the fields of climate, energy and nature.

In what is described as the first-ever analysis to quantify how heat exposure directly linked to climate change affects different age groups globally, the report showed that children are already disproportionately affected and are outpacing all other age groups, and will continue to do so under further warming.

It found that 560 million children aged between 0 to nine years old, which is 43% of all children in this age group, are living through at least one additional month of heat stress per year.

This compares to the 190 million people, about 30% of those aged 60 to 69, experiencing this additional health threat.

The largest increases in humid heat due to climate change are unequally distributed, mostly occurring in tropical regions and poorer countries, where populations are younger, and more children are therefore affected.

With the highest number of children exposed to dangerous heat stress mostly in South and Southeast Asia, as well as in West Africa.

The study also projected for a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which they say would negatively impact 620 million children globally.

And in a scenario where average temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius, the health of 650 million of the world's children would be put at severe risk.