Reducing the health effects of hot weather and heat extremes: from personal cooling strategies to green cities

Heat extremes (ie, heatwaves) already have a serious impact on human health, with ageing, poverty, and chronic illnesses as aggravating factors. As the global community seeks to contend with even hotter weather in the future as a consequence of global climate change, there is a pressing need to bett...

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Main Authors: Ollie Jay, Anthony Capon, Peter Berry, Carolyn Broderick, Richard de Dear, George Havenith, Yasushi Honda, R Sari Kovats, Wei Ma, Arunima Malik, Nathan B Morris, Lars Nybo, Sonia I Seneviratne, Jennifer Vanos, Kristie L Ebi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate change
Cooling
Health
Heat extremes
Heat stress
Hot weather
Physiology
Sustainability
Sweating
Temperature
Thermoregulation
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Summary:Heat extremes (ie, heatwaves) already have a serious impact on human health, with ageing, poverty, and chronic illnesses as aggravating factors. As the global community seeks to contend with even hotter weather in the future as a consequence of global climate change, there is a pressing need to better understand the most effective prevention and response measures that can be implemented, particularly in low-resource settings. In this Series paper, we describe how a future reliance on air conditioning is unsustainable and further marginalises the communities most vulnerable to the heat. We then show that a more holistic understanding of the thermal environment at the landscape and urban, building, and individual scales supports the identification of numerous sustainable opportunities to keep people cooler. We summarise the benefits (eg, effectiveness) and limitations of each identified cooling strategy, and recommend optimal interventions for settings such as aged care homes, slums, workplaces, mass gatherings, refugee camps, and playing sport. The integration of this information into well communicated heat action plans with robust surveillance and monitoring is essential for reducing the adverse health consequences of current and future extreme heat.