Rising Temperatures Expected to Spur More Early Births

From 1969 to 1988, 25,000 infants were born early each year as a result of hot weather, and with global warming pushing temperatures higher, more babies will be at risk for early birth.

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Hot weather increases pregnant women’s risk of giving birth early, and more babies could be born early as a result of global warming, researchers report today (December 2) in Nature Climate Change. The average reduction in gestational length is six days, they find.

“Increased exposure to hot weather with climate change is likely to harm infant health,” write coauthors Alan Barreca, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jessamyn Schaller, an economist at Claremont McKenna College, in the study. That’s because early birth is tied to poorer physical and mental health later in life.

Reviewing county birth rates around the time of extreme heat waves in the United States from 1969 to 1988, the researchers estimated that roughly 25,000 infants per year were born earlier than their due dates as a result of heat exposure, and that the heat led to the loss ...

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Meet the Author

  • Ashley Yeager

    Ashley started at The Scientist in 2018. Before joining the staff, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, a writer at the Simons Foundation, and a web producer at Science News, among other positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Ashley edits the Scientist to Watch and Profile sections of the magazine and writes news, features, and other stories for both online and print.

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