More talks with CNN about impact of climate change on pandemics
Patients lie in a US Army influenza ward in Aix-les-Baines, France, during World War I.
Cable News Network (CNN) interviewed Alexander More, an associate professor at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, about using ice cores to illustrate the impact of climate conditions on the number of deaths during a pandemic. Using an Alpine ice core to reconstruct the climate in Europe from 1914 to 1919, More discovered that cold, rainy weather which was part of a once-in-a-century climate anomaly caused more soldiers’ deaths in World War I, and increased the severity of the 1918 flu pandemic. “There’s no question that they are connected,” More said, adding that interdisciplinary research is critical to understanding the links between climate change and pandemics.