Spatial variability in threshold temperatures of heat wave mortality: impact assessment on prevention plans

Abstract

Spain's current heat wave prevention plans are activated according to administrative areas. This study analyses the determination of threshold temperatures for triggering prevention-plan activation by reference to isoclimatic areas, and describes the public health benefits. We subdivided the study area - the Madrid Autonomous Region (MAR) - into three, distinct, isoclimatic areas: 'North', 'Central' and 'South', and grouped daily natural-cause mortality (ICD-10: A00-R99) in towns of over 10,000 inhabitants (2000-2009 period) accordingly. Using these three areas rather than the MAR as a whole would have resulted in a possible decrease in mortality of 73 persons (38-108) in the North area, and in aborting unnecessary activation of the plan 153 times in the Central area and 417 times in the South area. Our results indicate that extrapolating this methodology would bring benefits associated with a reduction in attributable mortality and improved effectiveness of public health interventions.

Will there be cold-related mortality in Spain over the 2021–2050 and 2051–2100 time horizons despite the increase in temperatures as a consequence of climate change?

“…The important increase in these minimum daily temperatures, especially at low percentiles, may account for the fact that no cold waves are detected over any time horizon or scenario in a case where the cold wave definition temperature is assumed to remain constant over time. This different behaviour pattern in extreme with respect to mean temperature values was also detected in earlier studies in the case of heat (Carmona et al, 2017).…”

Heat and health in Antwerp under climate change: Projected impacts and implications for prevention

“…Moreover, from the stance of the operational efficiency of prevention plans, a proper definition of the plan activation temperature is crucial because, if the trigger temperature yielded by the climatological method is higher than that obtained epidemiologically, plans would not be implemented while heat-related mortality may already be occurring. In contrast, if the climatological percentile is below the figure obtained, this would imply activation of the prevention plan on days on which it was not required, with the ensuing economic cost ( Carmona et al, 2017 ).…”

June 2017: The Earliest European Summer Mega‐heatwave of Reanalysis Period

“…It was the hottest June in Spain (since 1965;AEMET, 2017), where some local records were exceeded by more than 1°C, and in the Netherlands (since 1901;KNMI, 2017). This month was also the second warmest June in France (since 1900; Meteofrance, 2017) and in Switzerland (since 1864; Meteosuisse, 2017 In spite of this, a noticeably increase in mortality was not reported by the media, arguably due to (i) an efficient implementation of early warning systems following the lessons learned from previous high-impact European mega-heatwaves, such as that of August 2003 (Kirch et al, 2005;García-Herrera et al, 2010;Lowe et al, 2011), and (ii) the use of air conditioning systems (Carmona et al, 2017;Kalvelage et al, 2014), which caused a 15% increase in energy demand in Iberia during the heatwave period (Red Eléctrica Española, http://www.ree.es/ es), reaching the highest value of the June time series (starting in 2010). The extreme temperatures were accompanied by drought conditions across western Europe (García-Herrera et al, 2018) and record-breaking SSTs in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean (Climate Central, 2017).…”