Defining Heatwaves with Respect to Human Biometeorology. The Case of Attica Region, Greece

Abstract

To date, due to climate change, heatwaves are more frequent, with greater intensity and duration resulting in deleterious impacts on human health. To be able to manage heatwaves and quantify the impacts on human health, it is crucial to define them and implement policy preventive measures. However, heatwaves are relative to the climate of a location: The same meteorological conditions can constitute a heatwave in one place but not in another. Due to different climatic conditions, social characteristics, and adaptation, heatwaves should be defined on a local scale, which poses difficulties when it comes to comparison of different definitions. The aim of the present study is to define heatwaves, implementing robust statistical analysis for three different indicators (temperature, physiological equivalent temperature (PET), and universal thermal climate index (UTCI)) for three causes of mortality (i.e., cardiological and respiratory mortality and cardiorespiratory mortality) using Attica (Greece) as a case study. Our results define a heatwave for Attica as a period of at least 3 days when the mean temperature is higher than the 97.5th percentile. Afterwards, we encapsulate the harvesting effect by implementing robust statistical analysis, using the Superposed Epoch analysis. Consequently, quantifying heatwaves is crucial so as to create early warning systems and prevent avoidable mortality.

Keywords

• heatwaves
• mortality
• temperature
• PET
• UTCI