Study: Changing Demographics May Alter Climate Vulnerability

Factors such as changing migration rates and life expectancy – beyond simple estimates of population increases – could help scientists predict more precisely how climate change will impact people in the future, researchers said Wednesday.

For instance, data suggests that life expectancy in Europe could rise by almost 20 years by 2100, while Asia’s sex ratio, now skewed toward more boys, could almost even out over the same period, the scientists wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Such differences will be important for assessing the vulnerability of populations to climate change and could help avoid misleading conclusions, said Raya Muttarak, a demographer with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, based in Austria.

Scientists “tend to not concede the fact that the socioeconomic and demographic components will change in the future”, Muttarak said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. But “as demographers, we can forecast this”.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-population-data-idUSKBN16837G

Lesley Waters/US Army Africa

#solar