Climate Change, Heat Waves, and Human Health

A special issue of Climate (ISSN 2225-1154).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2019) | Viewed by 20486

Special Issue Editors

NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Change and Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London WC1H 9SH, UK
Interests: health protection; mortality; evaluation; heatwaves; risk assessment; climate change; epidemiology; population health; global health
Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK
Interests: heatwaves; climate change; climate models; mortality; climate impacts; climate projections; air pollution

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Heatwaves have serious effects on human health and wellbeing. Heat waves kill but their effects are often invisible. Heat-related deaths are generally preventable through low cost interventions. The research evidence base needs to catch up with the rapid development of national and local heat-health warning systems based on daily meteorological alerts, which can be linked to actions that protect human health. Looking forward, national met services are likely to develop seasonal forecasts for hot summers.

This special issue will focus on heatwaves and their impacts; how future climate change will affect future exposures; and the policies, strategies and measures to address these changing risks. We welcome studies on climate services for heatwaves. We particularly value research that evaluates the usefulness of heatwave forecasts and alerts, and identifies the needs of users of heatwave forecasts, as well as the formal evaluation of heat health warning systems. Research on trends in heatwaves and health-relevant exposures is welcome, including papers that attempt to attribute observed increases in extreme temperatures to anthropogenic climate change. Finally, we welcome research on projections of heat waves and very extreme temperatures that will test our limits to adaptation. We particularly welcome submissions on heatwaves in low and middle income countries.

Dr. Sari Kovats
Dr. Michael G. Sanderson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Climate is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Heat Waves
  • health
  • seasonal forecasting
  • climate services
  • heat alerts
  • extreme weather
  • evaluation
  • health protection

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 2326 KiB  
Article
Integrating Satellite and Ground Measurements for Predicting Locations of Extreme Urban Heat
by Vivek Shandas, Jackson Voelkel, Joseph Williams and Jeremy Hoffman
Climate 2019, 7(1), 5; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/cli7010005 - 03 Jan 2019
Cited by 62 | Viewed by 19917
Abstract
The emergence of urban heat as a climate-induced health stressor is receiving increasing attention among researchers, practitioners, and climate educators. However, the measurement of urban heat poses several challenges with current methods leveraging either ground based, in situ observations, or satellite-derived surface temperatures [...] Read more.
The emergence of urban heat as a climate-induced health stressor is receiving increasing attention among researchers, practitioners, and climate educators. However, the measurement of urban heat poses several challenges with current methods leveraging either ground based, in situ observations, or satellite-derived surface temperatures estimated from land use emissivity. While both techniques contain inherent advantages and biases to predicting temperatures, their integration may offer an opportunity to improve the spatial resolution and global application of urban heat measurements. Using a combination of ground-based measurements, machine learning techniques, and spatial analysis, we addressed three research questions: (1) How much do ambient temperatures vary across time and space in a metropolitan region? (2) To what extent can the integration of ground-based measurements and satellite imagery help to predict temperatures? (3) What landscape features consistently amplify and temper heat? We applied our analysis to the cities of Baltimore, Maryland, and Richmond, Virginia, and the District of Columbia using geocomputational machine learning processes on data collected on days when maximum air temperatures were above the 90th percentile of historic averages. Our results suggest that the urban microclimate was highly variable across all of the cities—with differences of up to 10 °C between coolest and warmest locations at the same time—and that these air temperatures were primarily dependent on underlying landscape features. Additionally, we found that integrating satellite data with ground-based measures provided highly accurate and precise descriptions of temperatures in all three study regions. These results suggest that accurately identifying areas of extreme urban heat hazards for any region is possible through integrating ground-based temperature and satellite data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change, Heat Waves, and Human Health)
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