Steps Towards Comprehensive Heat Communication in the Frame of a Heat Health Warning System in Slovenia

Abstract

Occupational heat stress has an important negative impact on the well-being, health and productivity of workers and should; therefore, be recognized as a public health issue in Europe. There is no comprehensive heat health warning system in Slovenia combining public health measures with meteorological forecasts. The aim of this research was to provide insight into the development of such a system in Slovenia, turning the communication from the current meteoalarm into a broader system that has more information for different social groups. To achieve this goal, the following steps were used: Analysis of summer temperatures and issued meteoalarms, a survey of the general knowledge about heat among the public, organization and management of two stakeholder symposia, and a final survey on workers’ opinions on heat stress and measures, supplemented by interviews with employers. Summer average daily temperature distributions in Slovenia changed during the investigated period (1961–2019) and the mean values increased over time by 2–3 °C. Additionally, the number of days with fulfilled yellow (potentially dangerous) and especially orange (dangerous) meteoalarm conditions increased significantly after 1990. The survey of the general public about heat stress and warnings showed that efforts to raise awareness of heat issues need to be intensified and that public health measures should effectively target vulnerable groups. Stakeholder symposia and further surveys have shown that awareness and understanding of the negative effects of heat stress on health and productivity are still quite low, so effective ways of disseminating information to different sectors while striking the best balance between efficiency, feasibility and economic cost have to be found.

Reply on RC1, CC1, RC2

“…The SLOCLIM database opens up many possibilities for applications in areas which need data with high spatial and temporal analyses and projections (Dolinar et al, 2018;de Luis et al, 2014;Milošević et al, 2017), as well as reconstruction of past climate and extreme events based on tree-ring parameters (Cook et al, 2015;Čufar et al, 2008;Hafner et al, 2014). Research where climate data are needed also includes that focused on the effects of climate change on the well-being and health of population (Ciuha et al, 2019;Pogačar et al, 2019Pogačar et al, , 2020, as well as agroclimatic shifts and the food supply (Ceglar et al, 2012(Ceglar et al, , 2019a(Ceglar et al, , 2019b. In Slovenia, a densely afforested country, climate affects the survival and productivity of forest trees due to shifts in leaf phenology (Čufar et al, 2012, 2015), and the production of crucial tree tissues, like wood and phloem (Delpierre et al, 2019;Martinez del Castillo et al, 2018;Prislan et al, 2013).…”

SLOCLIM: A high-resolution daily gridded precipitation and temperature dataset for Slovenia

“…Research where climate data are needed also includes that focused on the effects of climate change on the well-being and health of the population (Ciuha et al, 2019;Pogačar et al, 2019Pogačar et al, , 2020, as well as agroclimatic shifts and the food supply (Ceglar et al, 2012(Ceglar et al, , 2019a. In Slovenia, a densely afforested country, climate affects the survival and productivity of forest trees due to shifts in leaf phenology (Čufar et al, 2012, 2015) and the production of crucial tree tissues, like wood and phloem (Delpierre et al, 2019;Martinez del Castillo et al, 2018;Prislan et al, 2013). While forest trees can be damaged due to extreme events like ice storms (Decuyper et al, 2020;Klopčič et al, 2020), the effects of climate differ along various gradients (Čater and Levanič, 2019;Jevšenak et al, 2020) and at the microsite level (Diaci et al, 2020;Kermavnar et al, 2019).…”

Effects of heat waves on soil temperatures in Slovenia

“…Data were retrieved from ARSO and for soil temperatures the calculation of daily averages was performed using the climatological standard. The period was chosen because the number of days with fulfilled criteria for dangerous heatrelated conditions due to the meteoalarm has especially increased since 1990 (Pogačar et al, 2020), and after 2000 heat waves in Slovenia are much more frequent, intense and longer than before (Pogačar et al, 2019). The upper year was set to 2016, because since 2017 there are no more measurements of soil temperatures at depths of 2 and 100 cm in Slovenia.…”