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University of Bristol staff and students also have the option to attend this event in-person. Please see internal event advert.
The Cabot Institute for the Environment and the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research invite you to the second in a series of Climate Change and Health seminars.
In this seminar, Dr Alan Kennedy-Asser and Sofia Samoylova will speak about the effects of rising temperatures on the health of humans and other species.
Dr Alan Kennedy-Asser - The unexpected tale of climate change impacts on health in rural Northern Ireland.
Dr Alan Kennedy-Asser is a senior research associate in the School of Geographical Sciences, whose research focusses on changing climate and its impacts on a range of scales. In recent years, this has included understanding the uncertainty in precipitation projections over Africa on the Salient project, as well interdisciplinary methods to quantify impacts of climate change at local-regional scales in the UK.
Abstract
As we progress through another summer of probable heatwaves in the UK, the ever-increasing volume of evidence of how heat affects human health mounds up. However, away from the south and east of England, where high temperatures and population amplify the heat risk, there is Northern Ireland: that rural, cool, damp corner of the country. With the all-time record temperature for the country standing at a whopping 31.3 °C, surely temperatures couldn’t be causing issues for health there? Think again. Interdisciplinary research published in Climate Risk Management shows the unexpected ways that people and livestock in Northern Ireland are being affected by our changing climate, even if (thankfully) it’s not yet 40 °C.
Sofia Samoylova - Heat impacts on pregnancy outcomes: an interdisciplinary and cross-species approach.
Sofia Samoylova is a second year PhD student at the School of Biological Sciences looking at the effects of heat exposure on pregnancy outcomes in life-bearing species.
Abstract
Extreme climate events such as heat waves are becoming increasingly prevalent, with an impact on multiple biological processes such as mortality and reproduction, across a range of species. This has been seen to particularly affect susceptible individuals such as pregnant mothers and their unborn child, with elevated temperatures observed to cause teratogenesis during pregnancy and associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth, stillbirth, and low birth weight. Despite studies into the associations between heat events and adverse outcomes, the underlying mechanisms and molecular factors remain largely unexplored. Furthermore, the effects of timing of the heat exposure on the type and severity of the outcome has not been yet elucidated.
This project aims to study the potential underlying physiological mechanism connecting heat events and adverse pregnancy outcomes, and how these depend on timing in pregnancy, through a series of heat related studies on a model of viviparous (life bearing) cockroach Diploptera Punctata as well as a human data-based approach. The human side of the project looks at investigating the link between temperature variations and pregnancy outcomes with the use of longitudinal studies such as ALSPAC and Born in Bradford, and analysis of human tissue data such as placental samples and cord blood to analyse the proteomic, transcriptomic and metabolic profiles present.