Over the last 50 years, human activities – particularly the burning of fossil fuels – have released sufficient quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to trap additional heat in the lower atmosphere and affect the global climate. In the last 130 years, the world has warmed by approximately 0.85oC. Each of the last 3 decades has been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.

Measuring the health effects from climate change can only be very approximate. Nevertheless, a World Health Organization assessment, taking into account only a subset of the possible health impacts, and assuming continued economic growth and health progress, concluded that climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38 000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48 000 due to diarrhoea, 60,000 due to malaria, and 95 000 due to childhood undernutrition (World Health Organization, 2021).

The UK Climate Change Projections provide an overview of climate change in the UK. In Wales, we can expect to see more intense rainfall, flooding in low-lying coastal areas as well as hotter, drier summers. The projections also forecast an increase in extremely warm days, milder and wetter winters, less snowfall and frost as well as lower groundwater levels. (Natural Resources Wales, 2021)