Using extreme weather event attribution to determine the impacts of climate change on human health
Abstract
Heatwaves in the United States are the leading cause of the weather-related deaths and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that each year more than 600 people are killed by extreme heat in the United States. Heatwaves are expected to increase in the future due to climate change and heatwave related mortality is projected to increase. Central and eastern regions of North American are expected to be exposed to the highest level of warming for extremely hot days. Central and western regions of North America are expected to be exposed to the highest levels of warming for extremely hot days. Our study focused on understanding the association between heatwaves and heat related illness (emergency department) hospital admissions in North Carolina.
We extracted daily minimum/maximum/mean temperature data, and Ozone concentration data by three geophysical regions in North Carolina; Coastal, Piedmont and Mountains, from the NOAA Global Historical Climatological Network. We have defined heatwave episodes as three or more consecutive days exceeding the 98th percentile of the historic temperature threshold. The daily heat-related illness hospital admission data for the summer season (May - September) from 2011 to 2016, obtained from NC DETECT syndromic surveillance database. We calculated the annual prevalence of heat-related hospital admissions specific to each region. Additionally, we conducted descriptive statistics by different temperature metrics specific to the region, to understand the temporal trend, distribution of hospital admissions by days of the week. We will also apply the Generalized Additive Model and Distributed Lag Non-Linear Model to attribute the impact of heatwaves and Ozone concentration on heat-related illness hospital admissions. The results of this study will help to identify the regions that are more vulnerable to heat exposure, so appropriate messaging can be developed to alleviate the negative impacts on human health.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGH13B1056P
- Keywords:
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- 0230 Impacts of climate change: human health;
- GEOHEALTH;
- 4306 Multihazards;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4313 Extreme events;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4322 Health impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS