No studies have even linked important indicators, such as sea level changes, with 'climate change', let alone heart disease. But you can definitely try correlating those different factors per se :-)

Hi Orimoloye..Plz go through the info avialbe @ below link. Best.

https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/398787

Heart disease is way out of my specialty.  Data suggests we are in a period of rapid temperature increase, and or more extremes intermittently, which is attributed by many to climate change.  However climate has natural variances and cycles that are complex.  If you find in data that heart disease is also steeply increasing during this same period, that might be correlated.  However with expansion of medical detection and knowledge of heart disease also during same period, and other changes like diet, exercise, climate controls like air conditioning, heart medications, etc., the analysis could have many outside influences or considerations beyond temperature.  I think it would be a challenge to link the two in a cause -effect relationship. 

Hi Orimoloye

This question should be answered by medical doctors. In my opinion, extreme temperatures due to climate change such as freezing cold, heat wave etc do affect our health.

Best regards

Ravi

Hi Surender Singh, Thank you so much for the useful link.

You can link and model pretty much anything with anything, through correlation, regression, and many more modern analyses, but a good correlation, which can happen by coincidence, or both factors may vary in function of a third, often unknown or unsuspected, factor) does not mean there is a causal relationship. But if you really want to dig the data, I would follow the recommendation of Sinnappoo to look after possible effects of cimate change-related extremes of temperature on heart disease/mortality. Moreover, perhaps climate change/extremes can cause an extra stress on - already stressed by multiple factors - human health and then trigger the effects of long-term heart/circulatory disease.   

For heart disease you need to define statistically viable parameters before you can start correlating these data with time series on temperature etc. Obvious parameters are cases of heart failure or heart attacks. For these you need good temporal resolution, most preferably no less than daily data, to correlate with meteorological information. Simple statistics of cases of cardiovascular diseases are not enough to assess the impact of climate variability. Once you have statistics to work with, don't forget to consider potential biases from data collection.

Thank you all

Climate change is linked with extreme weather. Weather and climate are related. They are not two separate unrelated discipline. It is the time scale which is differrent. Weather has a time scale of  minutes, hours and days whereas climate are weather conditions averaged over longer timescale (months, years, decades, etc). Now many scientific papers have shown that climate change is linked with increasing number of severe weather conditions including so called "airpocalypse smog events"  as recorded in China over recent years.

see report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/15/airpocalypse-smog-events-linked-to-global-warming-research-reveals

Now it is also known that smog events are linked to cardiovascular deaths (many sources have shown that).

See for example this:

Chinese air pollution linked to respiratory and cardiovascular deaths

Date:

February 10, 2017

Source:

American Thoracic Society

Summary:

In the largest epidemiological study conducted in the developing world, researchers found that as exposures to fine particulate air pollution in 272 Chinese cities increase, so do deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

Ischemic heart diseases is likely the one most likely to be associated with ultrafine particles (see reports of WHO on their webpages).

American Thoracic Society now consider that air pollution is a cause of heart disease and is an important factor (just as bad diet, lack of exercise and smoking).

Think about it. If smoking is linked with heart disease why not air pollution ?

There is certainly a link with climate change but not only caused by temperature and humidity. However, increased temperature increase photochemical reactions producing more certain type of pollution linked with respiratory problems and heart disease.  Now on a daily basis, these conditions are linked with  weather extreme of course but could be driven  by climate changes. To me the link between climate change and heart disease is real although not obvious.

Please have a look at these links.

https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/398787

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4265648/

This is to Kenneth Towe's comment: Many things are wrong here. First of all, changes in extremes, i.e. variability of extremes, do occur with global warming. That is obvious, if only from changing weather patterns. Pattern changes will have an effect on extreme precipitation, drought, storm frequency and severity etc. Second, 1938 is not "before our added CO2". Just look at the long-term atmospheric CO2 record and compare with pre-industrial concentrations. That said, it is difficult to judge if any single extreme event is connected to climate change. The only way of doing this is in context with pattern changes or statistical trends. - One more thing: it would be nice, Mr. Towe, if you make a contribution to answering the question, instead of making denialist comments just for the sake of it.

Thanks to you Franz for that good comment and also to everyone for their useful comments and links.

Kenneth, I don't understand your point. It doesn't seem coherent to me. First you say, climate change can cause "many extremes", then you are saying, extremes are nothing new and not "getting more extreme". What are you even talking about? Extremes getting more extreme? What do you mean? Climatologists speak of more frequent or more severe, and for many extremes we know that that is the case, e.g. hailstorms in Switzerland have become more frequent, and we even know some of the atmospheric circulation patterns that are behind changing frequencies. It is a more tricky business to understand how these pattern changes relate to climate change, at least for now. Other extremes, such as drought and heatwaves, are somewhat easier to connect with cc. There is strong statistical evidence for extremes becoming more frequent and more severe in many parts in the world. And climate scientists also discus impacts of warming on large-scale circulation patterns such as ENSO or NAO. So, how do you know that El Nino-La Nina variation is natural, i.e. unrelated to global warming?  

M. Towe ?

I am not going to argue with your climatoskeptic "evidence".

Have a good day sir.

Comprehensive Answers to climatoskeptics are listed in the above:

http://grist.org/series/skeptics/

Dear Orimoloye Israel

To answer your question (and not drift into a debate about climate change which will never end) here is what I have to say:

There is no doubt to me that a real link exists between climate change, increasing air pollution and potentially increasing heart disease although it is not entirely clear or obvious. So I encourage you to pursue your quest:

Climate change ---> increase of weather extremes ---> more acute smog events and wilfires --> impact on heart disease

See the following:

1) US Global Change Research Program. Link between climate change and health impact (including increased risk of cardio-vascular problems)

https://health2016.globalchange.gov/

2) In "airpocalyptic" smog event (Chicago, 1995; France 2003, China very often), the link has been established between smog and heart disease.

for example, see Chicago heat wave and death due to cardio-vascular diseases:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854989/

3)  statement of American Heart Association:

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/MyHeartandStrokeNews/Air-Pollution-and-Heart-Disease-Stroke_UCM_442923_Article.jsp#.WMxXpPLh8_8

In Canada, Dr. Reeves a cardiologist specialized in environment estimated that deaths during episode of smog is mostly related to cardio-vascular stress caused by pollution. The stress on sensitive people affected with heart disease will likely increase due to climate change. This a serious and interesting research avenue.

Other references:

Arden Pope II et al. 2009. Circulation, 2009, 120 : 941-948.

Dockery et al. 1993. New England J. of Medicine, 329 : 1753-1759.

Sun et al. 2005. JAMA, 94:3003:3010.

Regards

I think our colleague A. Robichaud is right about the distinction between weather and climate, which is artificial to some degree. He is also right about warning against drifting away from the initial question asked by our colleague Orimoloye. -- However, here are three more remarks with regard to the comments made by Kenneth M Towe. I hope my second remark is generally useful in that it addresses wide-spread confusion about the relationship between "weather" and "climate", particularly when it comes to extremes and hazards. That confusion is relatively widespread (not only among FoxNews reports on climate change). -- 1) For changing frequency and severity of hailstorms (and other hazards) in Switzerland (the example I mentioned in my previous comment) see reports by the OCCR (Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research) on Climate Change in Switzerland, which are updated frequently. You will find them online without much effort. They are open access and downloadable. The same applies to numerous other reports on adaptation to climate change, which have to be regional or even local. Every European country provides state-of-the-art reports on this issue, which include assessments of change in frequency and severity of hazards and extremes. Climatologists know that for many meteorological hazards and changes in extreme precipitation such assessments can only be provided based on high-spatial resolution data, which depends on the availability of time series fulfilling the criteria. Sweeping and generalising statements make little sense in this context. The best synthesis reports with lots of references to the literature, which also includes reviews of methodologies and data, can be found in the IPCC Working Group I and II Reports. Easy to find and easy to access online! -- 2) Perhaps the most flexible definition of climate has been given by Hans von Storch (in his textbook on meteorology and in other of his seminal publications), i.e. that climate is the "statistics of the weather". Today, this is no longer a comprehensive definition, as modern climatology also looks into the causes of climate change, so it is more than a mere description of climate conditions. However, the definition is useful, as it explains how weather as climate are connected, i.e. through statistical data and their evaluation. If we have that information on extremes (including meteorological and climatological hazards) available for a certain place, then we can develop a climatology of those extremes in that place. Opposing weather and climate in such a way that extremes are supposed to belong to weather makes no sense! The frequency and severity of extremes is an important part of climatology. In case frequencies and / or severities for extremes and hazards change, then we have evidence allowing us to discus climate change. The connection with forcings, such as greenhouse gase emissions, is, again, a question of causality. But that doesn't change the evidence. -- 3) The number of 0.8°C of temperature (t) increase is since the industrialisation. However, most of the recent increase (about 0,6°C) in t has been in the last thirty years alone. The climate system is complex and reacts slowly. But that is t change at record speed. Moreover, 2016 was a record year for additional CO2, about 2ppm in just one year. 0,8°C globally means something different everywhere. It is much more in higher latitudes. Germany, for examples, has experienced an increase of t of ca. 1,3°C since the start of meteorological measurements. Going further up North, to Greenland, the increase is much higher again. Polar ice is melting rapidly, leading to a positive feedback with regard to the planetary albedo, etc. -- Maybe, for a senior / retired person this isn't concerning. But for younger people with a longer life expectancy and a feeling of responsibility for future generations, this must be deeply concerning. 

You are confusing climate change with climate forcing, Kenneth. Understanding the causality of global warming is one thing. Connecting the main cause for it, i.e. the  greenhouse effect enhanced by human emissions of GHGs into the atmosphere, with all the changes in variability of all meteorological and climatological phenomena (extremes, hazards, precipitation, temperature etc.) is a different business. However, we can describe climate change by describing changes in all these different phenomena. That is what climatology does. No serious climatologist would approach the question of climate change merely from the point of view of forcing. That said, I doubt your competence in taking part in this discussion of methodological questions that we are having here. But I understand that your wonderful RG score depends so much on the "answers" category that you cannot afford restricting your comments to your area of expertise.

Kenneth,

I am saying that the stress to sensitive people will likely increase due to climate change. This is of course speculative (but well grounded) as it was at the time many decades ago when scientists were seeing the danger of cigarette smoking and when tobacco companies and even physicians where saying damage to health is speculative (how many people have died  from lung cancer due to cigarette smoking since ?) Many US and worldwide organizations have published statements which are similar concerning the link with climate change and health (have you ever look at IPCC reports, US Global Change Research Program, WMO, WHO and many more ?).  One thing, Kenneth, in environmental science, this is the PRINCIPLE OF PRECAUTION which is the guide, not a level of confidence of 95% which is the rule. By the time we reach 95% confidence, it will probably be too late. We have to be proactive and not like passive observers who are waiting catastrophic situations before acting.

Other thing.

When you say "We" are being stressed by constant reference to untested models. Who are "We" ? Climatoskeptics ? People well paid or having particular interests in petroleum companies or other fossil fuels ? By the way, climate models have been tested (look at the litterature please !).

Kenneth, have you really look at the site how to answer skeptics that I pointed out ?

Kenneth, did you know that during the Little Ice Age, the average temperature was only 1C colder than now and this had a tremendous impact in Europe and America.

An average temperature of 1 deg C over the planet means a lot.

Now warming is likely (yes I said likely) to exceed more than 3 degrees (perhaps even more) before the end of the century and perhaps before. And we do not know how  this will be stopped.

 Let's assume that cenarios of climate change will be true

By increasing CO2 concentration ( air pollution) will lead to  increasing of temperature and will lead to low concentration of O2 as result of rising temperature may cause a problems to those people who problems with breathing and would cause more heart diseases.

This is could be a link.

Just one more comment on the previous post by Kenneth M Towe. First of all, thanks for this! The cases of extreme weather are direct quotes  from a webpage that K.T. doesn't reveal himself, but is easy to google. It is from "Not a lot of people know that". Look here: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com -- The guy running this page as "editor" is Paul Homewood, a climate change "sceptic". Look yourself who this is and how qualified he is to speak up -- and be quoted -- as someone having a voice in the field of climatology. For me, this is all I have to say about this. No time for dealing with this nonsense.

Towe ?

One should not confuse p-value (or confidence level, e.g. 1 - p) with the concept of cutoff values for making decision to accept or reject  an hypothesis Ho. The latter is often taken as 0.05 or 0.01 in practice (level of confidence 95 or 99 PCT). However, reporting results with their level of significance p-value is something else. And in fact, reporting the p-value (whether or not is greater than 0.05 such as 0.1 , i.e. level of confidencce 90%)  provides much more information than just claiming significance or not based on the 5% level (Freeman, 1993). On the other hand, reporting results with larger p-values than 0.05 is a matter of choice and is somewhat arbitrary although the most popular values for p-values are 0.05.  Other p-values are used, i.e.  0.1, 0.05, 0.01, 0.001 and not only and strictly 0.05 or 0.01.

The over-abuse of the 5% level (p-value 0.15 see 

http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/2010/report/fullreport.pdf . Other example,  in a paper, I just read recently ( Cooper et al. (2012), (figure 4)) reports p-values as high as 0.16 for some data. At that level of significance, we can say that this association contains information although  not statistically significant at the 0.05 level (but at the 0.16 level). It is worth reporting it. There is no such good and bad results (p < or > 0.05) and absolute threshold in the field of statistics does not exist.

Therefore, the claim of rejecting a result because confidence level of 95% is not reached is not valid. Please stop spreading this urban legend.

In any cases, making action in the context of climate change should not wait until 95% level of confidence is reached. If your baby has fever with high temperature, would you wait until you reach 95% level of confidence before acting ? If ever the baby dies you will be criminally responsable. I do not want to be responsible of crime against future generation !

References

Cooper, O. R., Gao, R. S., Tarasick, D., Leblanc, T., and Sweeney, C.: Long-term ozone trends at rural

ozone monitoring sites across the United States, 1990-2010, J. Geophys. Res., 117 ,D22307,

doi:10.1029/2012JD018261, 2012.

Freeman, P. F.: The role of p-values in analyzing trial results, Statistics in medicine, vol. 12, 1443-1452,

1993.

Neter, J., Wasserman, W., and Whitmore, G.A.: Applied Statistics. Allyn and Bacon Inc., 1988, U.S.A.

Stigler, S. Fisher and the 5% level. Chance. vol 21, no. 4 2008.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00144-008-0033-3