Moving in a hotter world : maintaining adequate childhood fitness as a climate change countermeasure

Morrison, Shawnda A. (author)

Children cope with high temperatures differently than adults do, largely because of slight alterations in their body proportions and heat loss mechanisms compared to fully mature humans. Paradoxically, all current tools of assessing thermal strain have been developed on adults. As the Earth’s warming continues to accelerate, children are set to bear the health risk brunt of rising global temperatures. Physical fitness has a direct impact on heat tolerance, yet children are less fit and more obese than ever before. Longitudinal research reveals that children have 30% lower aerobic fitness than their parents did at the same age; this deficit is greater than can be recovered by training alone. So, as the planet’s climate and weather patterns become more extreme, children may become less capable of tolerating it. This comprehensive review provides an outline of child thermoregulation and assessment of thermal strain, before moving to summarize how aerobic fitness can modulate hyperthermia, heat tolerance, and behavioral thermoregulation in this under-researched population. The nature of child physical activity, physical fitness, and one’s physical literacy journey as an interconnected paradigm for promoting climate change resilience is explored. Finally, future research foci are suggested to encourage continued exploration of this dynamic field, notable since more extreme, multifactorial environmental stressors are expected to continue challenging the physiological strain of the human population for the foreseeable future.

• Language: English
• Keywords: sport, children, exercise, heat stress, behavioral thermoregulation, physical activity, tolerance, environmental epidemiology
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FŠ - Faculty of Sport
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 179–197
• Numbering: Vol. 10, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-147125
• UDC: 796:502/504
• ISSN on article: 2332-8959
• DOI: 10.1080/23328940.2022.2102375
• COBISS.SI-ID: 119659011
• Publication date in RUL: 23.06.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Temperature
• Shortened title: Temperature
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 2332-8959
• COBISS.SI-ID: 114596099

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: šport, otroci, telovadba, toplotni stres, termoregulacija, telesna dejavnost, strpnost, okoljska epidemiologija