Projection of heat wave mortality related to climate change in Korea

Do-Woo Kim (), Ravinesh Deo, Jea-Hak Chung and Jong-Seol Lee

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2016, vol. 80, issue 1, 623-637

Abstract: Heat waves associated with climate change are a significant future concern. Although deaths from heat disorders are a direct effect of heat wave incidences, only a few studies have addressed the causal factors between heat wave incidences and deaths from heat disorder. This study applies regression analysis to the time series data in order to deduce the causal factors that affect the number of deaths from heat disorders (NDHD) in Korea using observational dataset from 1994–2012. The duration of a heat wave and the age of the population are highly correlated with the magnitude of the NDHD. Based on this correlation we also analyze heat wave projections to the climate change scenarios produced using the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 3 under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) and to the single aging population scenario till 2060. The magnitude of the NDHD is expected to elevate by approximately fivefold under the RCP4.5 and 7.2-fold under the RCP 8.5 scenarios compared to the current baseline value (≈23 people per summer). Of greater concern is that the steady death rate increase is expected to be intercepted by the more severe events in future compared to the present period. Under both RCP scenarios considered, the extreme cases are projected to eventuate around the 2050s with approximately 250 deaths. We find that in spite of the greenhouse gas policy proposed to meet reductions under the RCP 4.5 scenario; serious heat wave damage in terms of human mortality may still be unavoidable in Korea. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Keywords: Heat waves projection in Korea; RCP 4.5 and 8.5; Heat deaths; Heat wave trends (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-015-1987-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:nathaz:v:80:y:2016:i:1:p:623-637

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-015-1987-0

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().