AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the March 7 edition of Climate In The News.
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00:00We're covering a couple of interesting climate stories today, starting with the impact of
00:05heat on aging populations, and then turning to some new science on how to better manage
00:11our forests from wildfires, starting with the story, Brett, from USC Leonard Davis School
00:17that focuses not on chronological age, but on biological age and how that seems to advance
00:22more rapidly for people who live in areas that are more prone to heat, right?
00:27Yeah, especially older people above the age of 56.
00:31That's what they studied.
00:32So biological age measures how well the body functions at a molecular level, also a cellular
00:38and system level.
00:39So compared to chronological, which is just the birth date, what they're seeing is areas,
00:44neighborhoods that experience more extreme heat, higher heat indices, are seeing an acceleration
00:51of their biological age across southern portions of the United States.
00:54Yeah, I think one of the interesting things about this study, too, is that it was not
00:57just accumulation over time living in a certain place.
01:01It actually seemed like there might be some short-term effects if you are exposed to significant
01:04heat.
01:05Even for a couple days, it may start to raise your biological age more quickly, right?
01:09Yeah, absolutely, and that's certainly a big problem.
01:12And the other problem is we're seeing more and more older people, retirees, moving to
01:17the southern states.
01:18That continues.
01:19So unless we see a reverse of climate change, which we do not expect, this could become
01:25a growing problem across the southern United States and expanding northward.
01:30Certainly a need to continue to make sure you stay inside at the hottest times of day
01:34and drink plenty of fluids if you live in areas that are significantly hotter.
01:38Moving to our next story from Florida Atlantic University, and that focuses on how we try
01:43to mitigate wildfires, and this is a bit of a new area of science where it talks about
01:47harvesting the wood without burning it.
01:51Yeah, absolutely.
01:52You know, normally, in recent time, we've been doing prescribed burns, which can get
01:57out of control, produce a lot of carbon, smoke, and whatnot.
02:00So this study looked at what's the best way to control these wildfires, limit the size
02:07of these wildfires, and what they found was, in addition to thinning forests, also cleaning
02:13up the dead debris that we see accumulating in these forests.
02:17And one of the things that was also interesting was the idea of transforming the wood, harvesting
02:22the wood without combusting it, and then transforming it into something that could be actually a
02:26carbon storing product, a carbon sink to take that carbon out of the atmosphere.
02:30Yeah, absolutely.
02:31That's certainly one way to do that.
02:32In the past, certainly Native Americans utilized a lot of this dead debris for shelter, tools,
02:39firewood, but now that's not happening anymore.
02:42So that's certainly a big change that's been going on.
02:45So what they found is that, again, the harvesting of dead wood greatly reduced the intensity
02:52of these fires and the size of these fires.
02:54Certainly some new science there and new methods to try to mitigate wildfires and reduce their
02:59impact.
03:00Thank you, Brett, for that.
03:01For more information on those stories and other climate information, you can find that
03:03at AccuWeather.com slash climate.