What is it about?
The joint occurrences of two natural hazards that may lead to worse impacts than the independent hazard alone represent so-called compound events. In this publication, concurrent daily elevated levels of ground-level ozone and air temperature as one specific health-relevant compound event are investigated under present and future European environmental and climatic conditions. Six regions of varying ozone and temperature characteristics, patterns, and variabilities are identified. Current and future region-specific health burden attributable to these compound ozone and temperature events is so investigated till the end of the 21st century over Europe.
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Why is it important?
Exposure to ground-level ozone provokes negative impacts on human health, mainly causing respiratory or cardiovascular diseases. Elevated air temperature levels and heat waves are recurrently associated with an exceptionally high mortality rate, representing only the extreme end of a variety of possible health effects. Occurrences of ground-level ozone and air temperature as well as concurrent elevated levels of both variables vary with the location of sites and seasons based on a variety of ambient conditions and mechanisms. The present study constitutes a novelty by presenting a regionalization approach based on both variables, ground-level ozone and air temperature, to account for spatiotemporally varying environmental and climatic conditions over Europe. Region-specific current and future health burden based on compound ozone and temperature events can so be investigated and emphasized in future European-wide mitigation and adaption strategies.
Perspectives
Doing research for and writing this article focusing on the interplay between ozone pollution, temperature, and human health, also in the context of global and regional climatic changes, was very existing and a great pleasure. It becomes more and more evident that we humans, our lives, and our health, are strongly affected by changing environmental and climatic conditions. The results reported in this publication highlight that it is crucial to intensify the investigation on joint occurrences of health-relevant natural hazards, also with regard to global climate change, that pose a substantial recent and future health risk to the European - and global - population.
Sally Jahn
Universitat Augsburg
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Using Clustering, Statistical Modeling, and Climate Change Projections to Analyze Recent and Future Region‐Specific Compound Ozone and Temperature Burden Over Europe, GeoHealth, April 2022, American Geophysical Union (AGU),
DOI: 10.1029/2021gh000561.
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