The physician and public health expert Dr. Paul Epstein has died at the age of 67. As associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Epstein was among the first to make the link between the spread of infectious diseases and extreme weather caused by a global warming. He discussed his work in an interview on Democracy Now! last December.

Dr. Paul Epstein: “It’s not often considered as part of the global warming story, but the heat of the last half century has built up in the oceans, and it’s the accelerated evaporation off of warm oceans that drives the heavy rains. A warmer atmosphere also holds more water vapor. For each one degree centigrade it heats up, it holds 7 more — 7 percent more water vapor. So there’s a push and a pull on the whole water cycle. And the key here is that global warming in the hemisphere, through the ocean engine, is now changing the weather patterns, and it’s the hydrological cycle, the earth’s water cycle, that’s been dramatically changed, with more droughts in some areas and more intense rains in others, and now intense snows.”