Estimating future heat-related and cold-related mortality under climate change, demographic and adaptation scenarios in 854 European cities.

Previous health impact assessments of temperature-related mortality in Europe indicated that the mortality burden attributable to cold is much larger than for heat. Questions remain as to whether climate change can result in a net decrease in temperature-related mortality. In this study, we estimated how climate change could affect future heat-related and cold-related mortality in 854 European urban areas, under several climate, demographic and adaptation scenarios.

Rapid climate action is needed: comparing heat vs. COVID-19-related mortality.

The impacts of climate change on human health are often underestimated or perceived to be in a distant future. Here, we present the projected impacts of climate change in the context of COVID-19, a recent human health catastrophe. We compared projected heat mortality with COVID-19 deaths in 38 cities worldwide and found that in half of these cities, heat-related deaths could exceed annual COVID-19 deaths in less than ten years (at + 3.

Municipality assessment of temperature-related mortality risks in Norway.

Background & Aim: Understanding local vulnerability to heat and cold is crucial for public health planning, yet few studies have provided a nationwide analysis of temperature-related mortality across diverse communities. This study analyses the association between ambient air temperature and non-accidental mortality across mainland Norway, using a constrained hierarchical clustering algorithm to group municipalities with similar geographic, environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic patterns.

Methods: This study analysed the association between ambient air temperature and non-accidental mortality across 356 Norwegian municipalities, using daily data from 1996 to 2018.

Independent effects of long and short-term exposures to non-optimal increased temperature on mortality.

Although the short-term heat effects are well-established, longer-term effects, beyond those, have recently received attention, in the context of climate change. Our study aims to investigate the potential effects of long-term exposure to non-optimal warm period temperatures on all-cause mortality in four large regions in the UK, Norway, Italy, and Greece. Daily all-cause mortality counts from 1996 to 2018 for four European NUTS-2 regions including 52-662 small areas were collected and associated with spatiotemporal temperature estimates.

Prediction of heatwave related mortality magnitude, duration and frequency with climate variability and climate change information.

Unlabelled: Given the link between climatic factors on one hand, such as climate change and low frequency climate oscillation indices, and the occurrence and magnitude of heat waves on the other hand, and given the impact of heat waves on mortality, these climatic factors could provide some predictive skill for mortality. We propose a new model, the Mortality-Duration-Frequency (MDF) relationship, to relate the intensity of an extreme summer mortality event to its duration and frequency. The MDF model takes into account the non-stationarities observed in the mortality data through covariates by integrating information concerning climate change through the time trend and climate variability through climate oscillation indices.

Impacts of land-use and land-cover changes on temperature-related mortality.

Background: Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) can substantially affect climate through biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects. Here, we examine the future temperature-mortality impact for two contrasting LULCC scenarios in a background climate of low greenhouse gas concentrations. The first LULCC scenario implies a globally sustainable land use and socioeconomic development (sustainability).

Long-term Associations Between Time-varying Exposure to Ambient PM 2.5 and Mortality: An Analysis of the UK Biobank.

Background: Evidence for long-term mortality risks of PM 2.5 comes mostly from large administrative studies with incomplete individual information and limited exposure definitions. Here we assess PM 2.

Commentary: A road map for future data-driven urban planning and environmental health research.

Recent advances in data science and urban environmental health research utilise large-scale databases (100s-1000s of cities) to explore the complex interplay of urban characteristics such as city form and size, climate, mobility, exposure, and environmental health impacts. Cities are still hotspots of air pollution and noise, suffer urban heat island effects and lack of green space, which leads to disease and mortality burdens preventable with better knowledge. Better understanding through harmonising and analysing data in large numbers of cities is essential to identifying the most effective means of disease prevention and understanding context dependencies important for policy.

Association between long-term exposure to low ambient PM and cardiovascular hospital admissions: A UK Biobank study.

Introduction: A causal link between air pollution exposure and cardiovascular events has been suggested. However fewer studies have investigated the shape of the associations at low levels of air pollution and identified the most important temporal window of exposure. Here we assessed long-term associations between particulate matter < 2.

Effect modification of air pollution on the association between heat and mortality in five European countries.

Background: Evidence suggests that air pollution modifies the association between heat and mortality. However, most studies have been conducted in cities without rural data. This time-series study examined potential effect modification of particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O) on heat-related mortality using small-area data from five European countries, and explored the influence of area characteristics.

Temporal variations in the short-term effects of ambient air pollution on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality: a pooled analysis of 380 urban areas over a 22-year period.

Background: Ambient air pollution, including particulate matter (such as PM and PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO), has been linked to increases in mortality. Whether populations' vulnerability to these pollutants has changed over time is unclear, and studies on this topic do not include multicountry analysis. We evaluated whether changes in exposure to air pollutants were associated with changes in mortality effect estimates over time.

Temperature-related mortality burden and projected change in 1368 European regions: a modelling study.

Background: Excessively high and low temperatures substantially affect human health. Climate change is expected to exacerbate heat-related morbidity and mortality, presenting unprecedented challenges to public health systems. Since localised assessments of temperature-related mortality risk are essential to formulate effective public health responses and adaptation strategies, we aimed to estimate the current and future temperature-related mortality risk under four climate change scenarios across all European regions.

High resolution mapping of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in Great Britain (2003-2021) with multi-stage data reconstruction and ensemble machine learning methods.

In this contribution, we applied a multi-stage machine learning (ML) framework to map daily values of nitrogen dioxide (NO) and particulate matter (PM and PM) at a 1 km resolution over Great Britain for the period 2003-2021. The process combined ground monitoring observations, satellite-derived products, climate reanalyses and chemical transport model datasets, and traffic and land-use data. Each feature was harmonized to 1 km resolution and extracted at monitoring sites.

Exploring the nexus of urban form, transport, environment and health in large-scale urban studies: A state-of-the-art scoping review.

Background: As the world becomes increasingly urbanised, there is recognition that public and planetary health relies upon a ubiquitous transition to sustainable cities. Disentanglement of the complex pathways of urban design, environmental exposures, and health, and the magnitude of these associations, remains a challenge. A state-of-the-art account of large-scale urban health studies is required to shape future research priorities and equity- and evidence-informed policies.

Ozone-related acute excess mortality projected to increase in the absence of climate and air quality controls consistent with the Paris Agreement.

Short-term exposure to ground-level ozone in cities is associated with increased mortality and is expected to worsen with climate and emission changes. However, no study has yet comprehensively assessed future ozone-related acute mortality across diverse geographic areas, various climate scenarios, and using CMIP6 multi-model ensembles, limiting our knowledge on future changes in global ozone-related acute mortality and our ability to design targeted health policies. Here, we combine CMIP6 simulations and epidemiological data from 406 cities in 20 countries or regions.

Reconstructing individual-level exposures in cohort analyses of environmental risks: an example with the UK Biobank.

Recent developments in linkage procedures and exposure modelling offer great prospects for cohort analyses on the health risks of environmental factors. However, assigning individual-level exposures to large population-based cohorts poses methodological and practical problems. In this contribution, we illustrate a linkage framework to reconstruct environmental exposures for individual-level epidemiological analyses, discussing methodological and practical issues such as residential mobility and privacy concerns.

Fluctuating risk of acute kidney injury-related mortality for four weeks after exposure to air pollution: A multi-country time-series study in 6 countries.

Background: Recent studies have reported that air pollution is related to kidney diseases. However, the global evidence on the risk of death from acute kidney injury (AKI) owing to air pollution is limited. Therefore, we investigated the association between short-term exposure to air pollution-particulate matter ≤ 2.

An epistemology for democratic citizen science.

More than ever, humanity relies on robust scientific knowledge of the world and our place within it. Unfortunately, our contemporary view of science is still suffused with outdated ideas about scientific knowledge production based on a naive kind of realism. These ideas persist among members of the public and scientists alike.

Economic valuation of temperature-related mortality attributed to urban heat islands in European cities.

As the climate warms, increasing heat-related health risks are expected, and can be exacerbated by the urban heat island (UHI) effect. UHIs can also offer protection against cold weather, but a clear quantification of their impacts on human health across diverse cities and seasons is still being explored. Here we provide a 500 m resolution assessment of mortality risks associated with UHIs for 85 European cities in 2015-2017.

Assessing heat effects on respiratory mortality and location characteristics as modifiers of heat effects at a small area scale in Central-Northern Europe.

Background: Heat effects on respiratory mortality are known, mostly from time-series studies of city-wide data. A limited number of studies have been conducted at the national level or covering non-urban areas. Effect modification by area-level factors has not been extensively investigated.

Interactive effects of ambient fine particulate matter and ozone on daily mortality in 372 cities: two stage time series analysis.

Objective: To investigate potential interactive effects of fine particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O) on daily mortality at global level.

Design: Two stage time series analysis.

Setting: 372 cities across 19 countries and regions.