Associations between elevated atmospheric temperature and human mortality: a critical review of the literature

The effects of the anomalously warm European summer of 2003 highlighted the importance of understanding the relationship between elevated atmospheric temperature and human mortality. This review is an extension of the brief evidence examining this relationship provided in the IPCC's Assessment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climatic change 2009-02, Vol.92 (3-4), p.299-341
Main Authors: Gosling, Simon N, Lowe, Jason A, McGregor, Glenn R, Pelling, Mark, Malamud, Bruce D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmospheric Sciences
Atmospheric temperature
Biological and medical sciences
Climate change
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Environmental health
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Fatalities
Global warming
Heat
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Literature reviews
Medical sciences
Meteorology
Miscellaneous
Mortality
Outdoor air quality
Prevention and actions
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Temperature
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Summary:The effects of the anomalously warm European summer of 2003 highlighted the importance of understanding the relationship between elevated atmospheric temperature and human mortality. This review is an extension of the brief evidence examining this relationship provided in the IPCC's Assessment Reports. A comprehensive and critical review of the literature is presented, which highlights avenues for further research, and the respective merits and limitations of the methods used to analyse the relationships. In contrast to previous reviews that concentrate on the epidemiological evidence, this review acknowledges the inter-disciplinary nature of the topic and examines the evidence presented in epidemiological, environmental health, and climatological journals. As such, present temperature-mortality relationships are reviewed, followed by a discussion of how these are likely to change under climate change scenarios. The importance of uncertainty, and methods to include it in future work, are also considered.
ISSN:0165-0009
1573-1480
DOI:10.1007/s10584-008-9441-x