The cost of climate change on sleep was measured by a study which concluded that every 1ºC increase in nighttime temperatures in the United States resulted in an increase of 110 million nights of insufficient sleep for American citizens per year. The MIT research in partnership with the University of California used data collected by smart watches from 765 participants in 68 countries.
ADVERTISING
Older people had more vulnerable sleep cycles, according to scientists. Research participants lost twice as much sleep as younger people. Climate change is also projected to differ across the population, deepening global inequalities. For low-income groups, for example, the availability of data and investment in similar research is still limited.
Losses
Attention, reasoning and other Cognitive abilities were also the focus of the study, which estimated that, by the year 2100, the performance of this field should be reduced by half due to exposure to high temperatures. Since the pre-industrial era, the global average temperature has risen by more than 1ºC, and the goal established by the Paris Agreement is that the number does not exceed 1,5º by 2025. However, the United Nations recently warned (UOL) that there is a 50% chance of this limit being exceeded in 2026.
Sleep deprivation and worsening related to the progressive rise in temperatures not only harm well-being and the population's productivity levels, but become a public health problem. According to the UK Health Security Agency, in 2020 heat waves (INMET) caused more than 2 thousand deaths. This year, the same climate event was widely reported and has weakened several countries in the Northern Hemisphere.
ADVERTISING
