The first study in the UK to look at the impact of climate change on sleep is being led by Loughborough University.

Quality sleep is essential to our health and wellbeing, with almost every major disease in the developed world – Alzheimer’s, cancer, obesity and diabetes – being linked to poor sleep.

For the first time, academics from Loughborough will investigate how higher night-time temperatures, caused by climate change, affect people’s sleep quality in their own homes across the UK.

Analysis by Loughborough University released in 2021 found that 4.6 million English bedrooms experienced summertime overheating.

The new ‘Home Heat Health: Sleep in the City’ study – funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council – will identify how temperature affects people’s sleep in their own homes.

The project is being led by Professor Kevin Lomas from the University’s School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering. He said: “Disentangling the effect of high summer temperatures on sleep is difficult, but we have a world-class, multi-disciplinary team of building physicists, sleep scientists, social scientists, and health experts drawn from across the University who are well placed to crack the problem.

“With global warming remaining a major threat to the world, a project of this scale and scope is long overdue. Our findings will be of benefit to many different organisations across the world.”

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