Patterns of extreme temperature-related catastrophic events in Europe including the Russian Federation: a cross-sectional analysis of the Emergency Events Database

Abstract

ObjectiveTo investigate reported extreme temperature-related catastrophic events and associated mortality on the European continent including the Russian Federation.DesignCross-sectional respecting Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) criteria.SettingsData source: Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT).ParticipantsSearch criteria: location—European continent including Russian Federation, time—years 1988 until 2019 (close of database 12 July 2019), catastrophic events—extreme temperatures.Primary outcome measuresNumbers of heat waves, cold waves, severe winter conditions and associated number of deaths, overall, and per country and year, respecting STROBE criteria.ResultsThe most frequent type of the 243 events recorded in EM-DAT were cold waves (54.7%). However, cold waves and severe winter conditions only accounted for 6460 deaths (4.5%), while heat waves were associated with 137 533 deaths (95.5%). The five most severe heat waves in 2003, 2006, 2010, 2013 and 2015 were associated with a total of 135 089 deaths. The most severe heat waves were geographically distributed over the Russian Federation (2010), as well as France, Italy, Spain and Germany, each in 2003.ConclusionAlthough cold waves are more frequently reported in EM-DAT, heat waves are the major cause for temperature-related deaths. In order to better protect the public, it is important to address resiliency and vulnerability of populations at risk and age groups.

Health Risks to the Russian Population from Temperature Extremes at the Beginning of the XXI Century

“…Significant and increasing direct and indirect impacts of extreme temperature events on human health -excessive morbidity and mortality [2,8,, negative effects on mental health [8,53,124,[129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136], human and community well-being [1,8,30,76,86,120,126,129,130], and health care systems [57,125,137] -are becoming an increasingly urgent global problem. Much is known about health consequences of heat and cold waves [1,[42][43][44][46][47][48][49]51,55,56,62,[69][70][71][72][73][74]79,81,83,86,[93][94]...…”

“…As an example, the danger of heat extremes for public health was particularly evident in August 2003 in Western Europe, when the heat wave had caused over 70,000 additional deaths [1,27,28,47,68,83,119]. In 2010, a "mega heatwave" with maximum temperatures up to 40°C and the combined effect of heat and smoke from numerous wildfires, covered Eastern Europe, the European part of Russia and southern Siberia [47]; estimates for the death toll were 55,000 in Russia and 11,000 in Moscow, with 15 billion USD of total economic loss, which was near 1% Russian gross domestic product [5,10,20,21,23,24,28,35,42,47,51,61,93,108,114,128,138]. According to World Health Organization, in the European region (43 countries) in the period from 2071 to 2099, heat waves could lead to 47-117,000 additional deaths annually [77].…”

Global key concepts of civil-military cooperation for disaster management in the COVID-19 pandemic—A qualitative phenomenological scoping review

“…When thinking about disaster management in general, it is of utmost importance to have a fundamental understanding about the basic needs of the potentially afflicted population including the vulnerable ( 68 , 69 ). For a general assessment of civil-military cooperation and a complementary regard on Gibson-Fall's valuable analysis of the three different trends of national military involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic ( 47 ), the humanitarian perspective of the United Nations is very interesting in terms of workload sharing and degree of military visibility.…”

Extreme weather events and death based on temperature and CO2 emission – A global retrospective study in 77 low-, middle- and high-income countries from 1999 to 2018

“…Both weather extremes typically last two or more days. Severe winter conditions include snow, ice, frost, and freeze ( Brennenstuhl et al, 2021 ). It should be noted that the exact temperature criteria for what constitutes a heat or cold wave varies by location ( Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR), 2014 ).…”