Abstract
Anthropogenic climate warming has increased the likelihood of extreme hot summers. To facilitate mitigation and adaptation planning, it is essential to quantify and synthesize climate change impacts and characterize the associated uncertainties. By synergistically using projections of climate scenarios from an ensemble of regional climate models and a spatially explicit version of an empirical health risk model, here we quantify the mortality risk associated with excessive heat stress for people aged over 65 years old across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Our results show that mortality risk is expected to intensify by a factor of 8–20 in the last 30 years of the twenty-first century with respect to the historical period (1951–2005) if no climate change mitigation planning is undertaken. If global warming is limited to 2 °C, the mortality risk is expected to rise by a factor of 3–7 for the same period. Further analyses reveal that much of the increase in mortality risk is due to the increase in frequency of warm days rather than their intensity. Unfortunately, the poorest countries with least contribution to climate change are expected to be most impacted by it, as they will experience higher mortality risks compared to wealthier nations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahmadalipour A, Moradkhani H (2018a) Escalating heat-stress mortality risk due to global warming in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Environ Int 117:215–225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.05.014
Ahmadalipour A, Moradkhani H (2018b) Multi-dimensional assessment of drought vulnerability in Africa: 1960–2100. Sci Total Environ 644:520–535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.07.023
Ahmadalipour A, Moradkhani H, Svoboda M (2017) Centennial drought outlook over the CONUS using NASA-NEX downscaled climate ensemble. Int J Climatol 37:2477–2491. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4859
Ahmadalipour A, Moradkhani H, Rana A (2018) Accounting for downscaling and model uncertainty in fine-resolution seasonal climate projections over the Columbia River Basin. Clim Dyn 50:717–733. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3639-4
Burke M, Hsiang SM, Miguel E (2015) Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production. Nature 527:235–239
Burke M, Davis WM, Diffenbaugh NS (2018) Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets. Nature 557:549
Checchi F, Robinson WC (2013) Mortality among populations of southern and central Somalia affected by severe food insecurity and famine during 2010–2012. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome
Christidis N, Jones GS, Stott PA (2015) Dramatically increasing chance of extremely hot summers since the 2003 European heatwave. Nat Clim Chang 5:46–50
Coffel ED, Horton RM, de Sherbinin A (2017) Temperature and humidity based projections of a rapid rise in global heat stress exposure during the 21st century. Environ Res Lett 13:14001
Deryng D, Conway D, Ramankutty N et al (2014) Global crop yield response to extreme heat stress under multiple climate change futures. Environ Res Lett 9:34011
Diasso U, Abiodun BJ (2017) Drought modes in West Africa and how well CORDEX RCMs simulate them. Theor Appl Climatol 128:223–240
Dole R, Hoerling M, Perlwitz J et al (2011) Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave? Geophys Res Lett. https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL04658
Dosio A (2017) Projection of temperature and heat waves for Africa with an ensemble of CORDEX regional climate models. Clim Dyn 49(1-2):493–519
Dunne JP, Stouffer RJ, John JG (2013) Reductions in labour capacity from heat stress under climate warming. Nat Clim Chang 3:563–566
Gasparrini A, Guo Y, Hashizume M et al (2015) Temporal variation in heat–mortality associations: a multicountry study. Environ Health Perspect 123:1200
Ghumman U, Horney J (2016) Characterizing the impact of extreme heat on mortality, Karachi, Pakistan, June 2015. Prehosp Disaster Med 31:263–266
Guo Y, Li S, Li Liu D et al (2016) Projecting future temperature-related mortality in three largest Australian cities. Environ Pollut 208:66–73
Harrington LJ, Frame DJ, Fischer EM et al (2016) Poorest countries experience earlier anthropogenic emergence of daily temperature extremes. Environ Res Lett 11:55007
Honda Y, Kondo M, McGregor G et al (2014) Heat-related mortality risk model for climate change impact projection. Environ Health Prev Med 19:56–63
Huber V, Ibarreta D, Frieler K (2017) Cold-and heat-related mortality: a cautionary note on current damage functions with net benefits from climate change. Clim Chang 142(3-4):407–418
Im E-S, Pal JS, Eltahir EAB (2017) Deadly heat waves projected in the densely populated agricultural regions of South Asia. Sci Adv 3:e1603322
Im E-S, Kang S, Eltahir EAB (2018) Projections of rising heat stress over the western Maritime Continent from dynamically downscaled climate simulations. Glob Planet Change 165:160–172
Jones C, Giorgi F, Asrar G (2011) The Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment: CORDEX–an international downscaling link to CMIP5. CLIVAR Exch 56:34–40
Kam J, Knutson TR, Zeng F, Wittenberg AT (2016) Multimodel assessment of anthropogenic influence on record global and regional warmth during 2015. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 97:S4–S8
Kim J, Waliser DE, Mattmann CA et al (2014) Evaluation of the CORDEX-Africa multi-RCM hindcast: systematic model errors. Clim Dyn 42:1189–1202
King AD, Harrington LJ (2018) The inequality of climate change from 1.5°C to 2°C of global warming. Geophys Res Lett 45:5030–5033
Kjellstrom T, Briggs D, Freyberg C et al (2016) Heat, human performance, and occupational health: a key issue for the assessment of global climate change impacts. Annu Rev Public Health 37:97–112
Knutson TR, Ploshay JJ (2016) Detection of anthropogenic influence on a summertime heat stress index. Clim Chang 138:25–39
Lee JY, Kim H (2016) Projection of future temperature-related mortality due to climate and demographic changes. Environ Int 94:489–494
Lelieveld J, Hadjinicolaou P, Kostopoulou E et al (2012) Climate change and impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Clim Chang 114:667–687. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0418-4
Lelieveld J, Proestos Y, Hadjinicolaou P et al (2016) Strongly increasing heat extremes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the 21st century. Clim Chang 137:245–260
Lewis SC, Karoly DJ (2013) Anthropogenic contributions to Australia’s record summer temperatures of 2013. Geophys Res Lett 40:3705–3709
Li J, Sharma A, Evans J, Johnson F (2016a) Addressing the mischaracterization of extreme rainfall in regional climate model simulations—a synoptic pattern based bias correction approach. J Hydrol 556:901–912
Li T, Horton RM, Bader DA et al (2016b) Aging will amplify the heat-related mortality risk under a changing climate: projection for the elderly in Beijing, China. Sci Rep 6:28161
Li C, Zhang X, Zwiers F, et al (2017) Recent very hot summers in northern hemispheric land areas measured by wet bulb globe temperature will be the norm within 20 years. Earth’s Futur
Li C, Fang Y, Caldeira K et al (2018) Widespread persistent changes to temperature extremes occurred earlier than predicted. Sci Rep 8:1007
Liu Y, Parolari AJ, Kumar M et al (2017) Increasing atmospheric humidity and CO2 concentration alleviate forest mortality risk. Proc Natl Acad Sci 114:9918–9923
Loughnan M, Nicholls N, Tapper N (2010) Mortality–temperature thresholds for ten major population centres in rural Victoria, Australia. Health Place 16:1287–1290
Lubega WN, Stillwell AS (2018) Maintaining electric grid reliability under hydrologic drought and heat wave conditions. Appl Energy 210:538–549
Luo L, Zhang Y (2012) Did we see the 2011 summer heat wave coming? Geophys Res Lett 39:L09708
Mazdiyasni O, AghaKouchak A, Davis SJ et al (2017) Increasing probability of mortality during Indian heat waves. Sci Adv 3:e1700066
McDowell NG, Williams AP, Xu C et al (2016) Multi-scale predictions of massive conifer mortality due to chronic temperature rise. Nat Clim Chang 6:295
Mehrotra R, Johnson F, Sharma A (2018) A software toolkit for correcting systematic biases in climate model simulations. Environ Model Softw 104:130–152
Miao C, Su L, Sun Q, Duan Q (2016a) A nonstationary bias-correction technique to remove bias in GCM simulations. J Geophys Res Atmos 121(10):5718–5735
Miao C, Sun Q, Kong D, Duan Q (2016b) Record-breaking heat in northwest China in July 2015: analysis of the severity and underlying causes. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 97:S97–S101
Millar RJ, Fuglestvedt JS, Friedlingstein P et al (2017) Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C. Nat Geosci 10:741–747. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo3031
Mitchell D (2016) Human influences on heat-related health indicators during the 2015 Egyptian heat wave. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 97:S70–S74
Mora C, Dousset B, Caldwell IR et al (2017) Global risk of deadly heat. Nat Clim Chang 7:501–506
Nahar J, Johnson F, Sharma A (2018) Addressing spatial dependence bias in climate model simulations—an independent component analysis approach. Water Resour Res 54:827–841
Najafi MR, Moradkhani H (2015) Multi-model ensemble analysis of runoff extremes for climate change impact assessments. J Hydrol 525:352–361. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.03.045
Nangombe S, Zhou T, Zhang W et al (2018) Record-breaking climate extremes in Africa under stabilized 1.5 °C and 2°C global warming scenarios. Nat Clim Chang 8:375–380. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0145-6
Nguyen H, Mehrotra R, Sharma A (2018) Correcting systematic biases across multiple atmospheric variables in the frequency domain. Clim Dyn 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4191-6
Nikiema PM, Sylla MB, Ogunjobi K et al (2017) Multi-model CMIP5 and CORDEX simulations of historical summer temperature and precipitation variabilities over West Africa. Int J Climatol 37:2438–2450
Önol B, Bozkurt D, Turuncoglu UU et al (2013) Evaluation of the twenty-first century RCM simulations driven by multiple GCMs over the Eastern Mediterranean–Black Sea region. Clim Dyn 42:1949–1965. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1966-7
Pal JS, Eltahir EAB (2016) Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability. Nat Clim Chang 6:197–200
Papalexiou SM, AghaKouchak A, Trenberth KE, Foufoula-Georgiou E (2018) Global, regional, and megacity trends in the highest temperature of the year: diagnostics and evidence for accelerating trends. Earth’s Futur 6:71–79
Ring C, Pollinger F, Kaspar-Ott I et al (2017) A comparison of metrics for assessing state-of-the-art climate models and implications for probabilistic projections of climate change. Clim Dyn 50(5-6):2087–2106
Rocheta E, Evans JP, Sharma A (2017) Can bias correction of regional climate model lateral boundary conditions improve low-frequency rainfall variability? J Clim 30:9785–9806
Ross ME, Vicedo-Cabrera AM, Kopp RE et al (2018) Assessment of the combination of temperature and relative humidity on kidney stone presentations. Environ Res 162:97–105
Russo S, Marchese AF, Sillmann J, Immé G (2016) When will unusual heat waves become normal in a warming Africa? Environ Res Lett 11:54016
Sun Y, Zhang X, Zwiers FW et al (2014) Rapid increase in the risk of extreme summer heat in Eastern China. Nat Clim Chang 4:1082–1085
Sylla MB, Faye A, Giorgi F, et al (2018a) Projected heat stress under 1.5°C and 2°C global warming scenarios creates unprecedented discomfort for humans in West Africa. Earth’s Futur 6(7):1029–1044
Sylla MB, Faye A, Klutse NAB, Dimobe K (2018b) Projected increased risk of water deficit over major West African river basins under future climates. Clim Change 151(2):247–258
Tarroja B, Chiang F, AghaKouchak A, Samuelsen S (2018) Assessing future water resource constraints on thermally based renewable energy resources in California. Appl Energy 226:49–60
Waha K, Krummenauer L, Adams S et al (2017) Climate change impacts in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region and their implications for vulnerable population groups. Reg Environ Chang 17:1623–1638
Willett KM, Sherwood S (2012) Exceedance of heat index thresholds for 15 regions under a warming climate using the wet-bulb globe temperature. Int J Climatol 32:161–177
Woldemeskel FM, Sharma A, Sivakumar B, Mehrotra R (2016) Quantification of precipitation and temperature uncertainties simulated by CMIP3 and CMIP5 models. J Geophys Res Atmos 121:3–17
World Bank (2010) GDP per capita (current US $). Retreived from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD. Accessed 5 June 2018
Zhao Y, Sultan B, Vautard R et al (2016) Potential escalation of heat-related working costs with climate and socioeconomic changes in China. Proc Natl Acad Sci 113:4640–4645
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) for providing access to climate models. We also appreciate the World Bank for providing data for greenhouse gases emissions and GDP per capita at national level.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Key points
• A spatially explicit health risk model that accounts for regional temperature thresholds is utilized to quantify mortality risk in MENA.
• Substantial increase in mortality risk is expected, which is due to the increase in frequency of warm days rather than their intensity.
• Mortality risk ratio is found highest in poor nations with least contribution to anthropogenic climate change.
Electronic supplementary material
ESM 1
(PDF 8 mb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ahmadalipour, A., Moradkhani, H. & Kumar, M. Mortality risk from heat stress expected to hit poorest nations the hardest. Climatic Change 152, 569–579 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2348-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2348-2