Losing Sleep Over Climate Change? It's Not All the Worry, It Could Be The Actual Temperature

We ended up installing a bedroom air conditioner at our
house a few years ago as nights in Vermont get hotter
and more oppressive. A study suggests people
globally are losing sleep due to hotter nights. 

 We've got an early season heat wave under way in Vermont, so it might take you awhile to get comfortable for sleeping if your house isn't air conditioned. 

Luckily, it's not that humid, so nights will cool off fairly reasonably. Still, we're not used to it, and even a sort of warm night can feel stuffy by our standards. 

Get used to it, summer's coming, even if extended forecasts call for a coolish early and mid June after this heat wave passes.

Another reason to get used to it:   Climate change is making nights generally hotter than they used to be almost everywhere on Earth. And that is messing up with the sleep for billions of people. 

As the Washington Post reports, Nick Obradovich, the principal investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development looked at climate change and sleep. WaPo tells us:

In his study looking at 47,000 adults in 68 countries, Obradovich and his colleagues found a notable change in sleep duration when nighttime temperatures rose above 50 degrees. On nights above 86 degrees, people slept about 14 minutes less on average.

The decline in sleep over 50 degrees surprises me, as that strikes me as an incredibly comfortable summer sleeping low temperature. But I can see where people get in trouble when it's in the 60s, 70sk or gawd forbid 80s or 90s overnight. 

Obradovich was inspired to look into this issue when he was studying for his PhD in political scientist at the University of California, San Diego back in October, 2015. The city is usually cool and dry, but on one particular week that month, San Diego endured its three warmest nights on record. 

The condo where he lived had no air conditioning, and by the end of the week he was tired, crabby and unable to concentrate due to lack of sleep.

So he decided to look into whether this is a problem for everybody. Here's more of his results, as reported by the Washington Post: 

 "Over longer chunks if time, the loss is stark: They estimate people are already losing an average of 44 hours of sleep per year - and as the warming continues, people will be hard-pressed to find a good night's rest."

WaPO continues:

"Projections show global warming....will have the biggest sleep loss in the Middle East, southeast Asia and Australia. By the end of the 21st century, people in the warmest regions are expected to lose an additional three nights of sleep per year due to higher nighttime temperatures."

 Nights have warmed faster than daytime temperatures in many places around the globe. By 2100, individuals worldwide could lose about 50 to 58 hours of sleep per year. 

Lack of sleep can make us groggy, of course, but it can cause a many much worse problems, like mental health issues, obesity, heart problems and  premature death. 

The ideal temperature at which to sleep for most people is between 63 and 69 degrees (I personally prefer it to be around 60 to 62). The lower bedroom temperatures make our body core temperature decrease, which increases drowsiness and helps us stay asleep. 

A solution to the problem, for those who can afford it, is air conditioning. Of course, poorer regions have little access to the air conditioning, and some of those are the hottest places on Earth. 

Also, the more air conditioning you have, the more energy you need to run them.  Some of that energy comes from fossil fuel consumption, which is the main driver of climate change. 

Even here in Vermont, where we are pretty safe from much dangerously hot weather, we're having hotter and more uncomfortable nights, and more reliance on air conditioning. 

I was once one of those smug Vermonters who'd always say we don't need air conditioning. It's not hot enough for that here. 

Over the past decade or two, summer nights have started to get more oppressive. During a 2018 heat wave, which brought us the warmest low temperature of any night on record in Burlington - 80 - degrees, plus a heat exhaustion scare involving my husband, we installed a bedroom air conditioner. 

Now, we can't live without. Part of  it is we're wimps, and part of it is climate change is slowly altering our habits and the way we live.