Frequency of Extreme Heat Event as a Surrogate Exposure Metric for Examining the Human Health Effects of Climate Change

Crystal Romeo Upperman, Jennifer Parker, Chengsheng Jiang, Xin He, Raghuram Murtugudde and Amir Sapkota

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: Epidemiological investigation of the impact of climate change on human health, particularly chronic diseases, is hindered by the lack of exposure metrics that can be used as a marker of climate change that are compatible with health data. Here, we present a surrogate exposure metric created using a 30-year baseline (1960–1989) that allows users to quantify long-term changes in exposure to frequency of extreme heat events with near unabridged spatial coverage in a scale that is compatible with national/state health outcome data. We evaluate the exposure metric by decade, seasonality, area of the country, and its ability to capture long-term changes in weather (climate), including natural climate modes. Our findings show that this generic exposure metric is potentially useful to monitor trends in the frequency of extreme heat events across varying regions because it captures long-term changes; is sensitive to the natural climate modes (ENSO events); responds well to spatial variability, and; is amenable to spatial/temporal aggregation, making it useful for epidemiological studies.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144202 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 44202&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0144202

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144202

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().