The Effects of Heat Stress on the Ovary, Follicles and Oocytes: A Systematic Review.

Climate change is driving significant environmental changes with profound implications for human health, including fertility. While the detrimental effects of heat on spermatogenesis are well-documented, the impact of elevated temperatures on ovaries and female fertility remains less explored. This review systematically examines the literature on heat stress (HS) effects on mammalian ovaries, follicles, and oocytes.

Methodological Approaches for Measuring the Association Between Heat Exposure and Health Outcomes: A Comprehensive Global Scoping Review.

Objective: To synthesize the methodologies of studies that evaluate the impacts of heat exposure on morbidity and mortality.

Methods: Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched from date of inception until 1 March 2023 for English language literature on heat exposure and health outcomes. Records were collated, deduplicated and screened, and full texts were reviewed for inclusion and data abstraction.

All-Cause NO-Attributable Mortality Burden and Associated Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the United States.

Nitrogen dioxide (NO) is a regulated pollutant that is associated with numerous health impacts. Recent advances in epidemiology indicate high confidence linking NO exposure with increased mortality, an association that recent studies suggest persists even at concentrations below regulatory thresholds. While large disparities in NO exposure among population subgroups have been reported, U.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mortality and neighborhood characteristics in Chicago.

Purpose: To describe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mortality in Chicago during the spring of 2020 and identify at the census-tract level neighborhood characteristics that were associated with higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

Methods: Using Poisson regression and regularized linear regression (elastic net), we evaluated the association between neighborhood characteristics and COVID-19 mortality rates in Chicago through July 22 (2514 deaths across 795 populated census tracts).

Results: Black residents (31% of the population) accounted for 42% of COVID-19 deaths.

Guidelines for Modeling and Reporting Health Effects of Climate Change Mitigation Actions.

Background: Modeling suggests that climate change mitigation actions can have substantial human health benefits that accrue quickly and locally. Documenting the benefits can help drive more ambitious and health-protective climate change mitigation actions; however, documenting the adverse health effects can help to avoid them. Estimating the health effects of mitigation (HEM) actions can help policy makers prioritize investments based not only on mitigation potential but also on expected health benefits.

Author Correction: Modeling organic carbon loss from a rapidly eroding freshwater coastal wetland.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Modeling organic carbon loss from a rapidly eroding freshwater coastal wetland.

Shoreline erosion can transition freshwater coastal wetlands from carbon sinks to carbon sources. No studies have explored the impacts of coastal geomorphic processes on freshwater wetland carbon budgets. To do so, we modified a saltmarsh carbon budget model for application in freshwater coastal wetlands.

Projected timing of perceivable changes in climate extremes for terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

Human and natural systems have adapted to and evolved within historical climatic conditions. Anthropogenic climate change has the potential to alter these conditions such that onset of unprecedented climatic extremes will outpace evolutionary and adaptive capabilities. To assess whether and when future climate extremes exceed their historical windows of variability within impact-relevant socioeconomic, geopolitical, and ecological domains, we investigate the timing of perceivable changes (time of emergence; TOE) for 18 magnitude-, frequency-, and severity-based extreme temperature (10) and precipitation (8) indices using both multimodel and single-model multirealization ensembles.

Quantifying the influence of global warming on unprecedented extreme climate events.

Efforts to understand the influence of historical global warming on individual extreme climate events have increased over the past decade. However, despite substantial progress, events that are unprecedented in the local observational record remain a persistent challenge. Leveraging observations and a large climate model ensemble, we quantify uncertainty in the influence of global warming on the severity and probability of the historically hottest month, hottest day, driest year, and wettest 5-d period for different areas of the globe.

Drought and immunity determine the intensity of West Nile virus epidemics and climate change impacts.

The effect of global climate change on infectious disease remains hotly debated because multiple extrinsic and intrinsic drivers interact to influence transmission dynamics in nonlinear ways. The dominant drivers of widespread pathogens, like West Nile virus, can be challenging to identify due to regional variability in vector and host ecology, with past studies producing disparate findings. Here, we used analyses at national and state scales to examine a suite of climatic and intrinsic drivers of continental-scale West Nile virus epidemics, including an empirically derived mechanistic relationship between temperature and transmission potential that accounts for spatial variability in vectors.

Recent amplification of the North American winter temperature dipole.

During the winters of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, anomalously warm temperatures in western North America and anomalously cool temperatures in eastern North America resulted in substantial human and environmental impacts. Motivated by the impacts of these concurrent temperature extremes and the intrinsic atmospheric linkage between weather conditions in the western and eastern United States, we investigate the occurrence of concurrent "warm-West/cool-East" surface temperature anomalies, which we call the "North American winter temperature dipole." We find that, historically, warm-West/cool-East dipole conditions have been associated with anomalous mid-tropospheric ridging over western North America and downstream troughing over eastern North America.

Trends in atmospheric patterns conducive to seasonal precipitation and temperature extremes in California.

Recent evidence suggests that changes in atmospheric circulation have altered the probability of extreme climate events in the Northern Hemisphere. We investigate northeastern Pacific atmospheric circulation patterns that have historically (1949-2015) been associated with cool-season (October-May) precipitation and temperature extremes in California. We identify changes in occurrence of atmospheric circulation patterns by measuring the similarity of the cool-season atmospheric configuration that occurred in each year of the 1949-2015 period with the configuration that occurred during each of the five driest, wettest, warmest, and coolest years.

Contribution of changes in atmospheric circulation patterns to extreme temperature trends.

Surface weather conditions are closely governed by the large-scale circulation of the Earth's atmosphere. Recent increases in the occurrence of some extreme weather phenomena have led to multiple mechanistic hypotheses linking changes in atmospheric circulation to increasing probability of extreme events. However, observed evidence of long-term change in atmospheric circulation remains inconclusive.

Occurrence and persistence of future atmospheric stagnation events.

Poor air quality causes an estimated 2.6 to 4.4 million premature deaths per year.

Response of air stagnation frequency to anthropogenically enhanced radiative forcing.

Stagnant atmospheric conditions can lead to hazardous air quality by allowing ozone and particulate matter to accumulate and persist in the near-surface environment. By changing atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns, global warming could alter the meteorological factors that regulate air stagnation frequency. We analyze the response of the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) Air Stagnation Index (ASI) to anthropogenically enhanced radiative forcing using global climate model projections of late-21(st) century climate change (SRES A1B scenario).