With climate change, some parts of the world will get more water, but others will experience droughts. Some will start seeing more mosquitoes, but some fewer. And some regions might actually benefit economically. What’s the deal? In this episode of TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate), MIT professor Elfatih Eltahir joins host Laur Hesse Fisher to talk about how climate impacts will differ across the globe. Together, they do a quick world tour, exploring how climate change will affect malaria in Africa, water availability in the Nile, and heat waves in Southern Asia.
Elfatih Eltahir is a professor of Hydrology and Climate in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and he has taught at MIT since 1994. Prof. Eltahir is interested in understanding how regional land use/land cover change, as well as global climate change, may impact society through changes in the patterns of water availability, extreme weather, and spread of vector-borne diseases. Working with his students, he develops numerical models that are used for predicting these impacts at regional scales.
For more short climate change explainers, check out: www.tilclimate.mit.edu.
Links
For more information on regional climate impacts, check out:
The work of Prof. Eltahir:
- Prof. Eltahir’s website
- China could face deadly heat waves due to climate change (MIT News)
- Parts of Asia might be too hot for people by 2100 (National Geographic)
- Nile faces greater variability (MIT News)
- 3Q: Elfatih Eltahir on what Malaria and Dengue can tell us about Zika (MIT News)
The New York Times graphic that Prof. Eltahir mentions at 9:10:
- How Americans Think About Climate Change, in Six Maps (New York Times)
Large-scale climate:
- Climate change and vector-borne diseases (UCAR)
- Sand from Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheet Could Bring in Business (American Geophysical Union)
- Does global warming mean it’s warming everywhere? (NOAA)
- More Floods and More Droughts: Climate Change Delivers Both (New York Times)
Climate impacts in the US:
- National Climate Assessment Overview (U.S. Global Change Research Program)
An overview of climate change:
- Climate Science and Climate Risk: A Primer (Kerry Emanuel)
Credits
- Laur Hesse Fisher, Host and Producer
- [David Lishansky]((https://twitter.com/DaveResonates), Editor and Producer
- Cecelia Bolon, Student Production Assistant
- Music by Blue Dot Sessions
- Artwork by Aaron Krol
Special thanks to Tom Kiley and MIT Open Learning.
Produced by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.