2024-09-12
5 分钟The Economist. Hello, this is Alok Jha,
host of Babbage, our weekly podcast on science and technology.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist.
Please do have a listen.
The hottest year on record, 2023, may not retain its title for long.
2024 already looks as though it may overtake it.
As temperatures continue to rise,
countries will scramble to prevent heat deaths and tackle extreme weather.
But global warming also has much subtler effects,
including, researchers suggest, on fertility.
A paper recently published in Population Studies, a journal,
is the latest to document a relationship between extreme heat and baby-making.
It shows that the fertility rate in Spain fell roughly nine months after extremely hot days,
echoing recent data from countries around the world.
Although this effect is generally small, it could grow as climate change accelerates.
Risto Conte Caverbu from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany,
the lead author of the latest paper,
worked with his colleagues to calculate Spain's total fertility rate, or TFR.
The average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime based on current fertility rates for each month between 2010 and 2018.