Hospitalization Costs of Respiratory Diseases Attributable to Temperature in the Context of Climate Change in Australia

Abstract Background: The association between temperatures and respiratory diseases has been extensively reported. However, the associated healthcare costs and attributable fractions due to temperature have scarcely been explored. The aims of this study were to estimate respiratory disease hospitalization costs attributable to non-optimum ambient temperature, to quantify the attributable fraction from cold and hot temperatures, and to estimate the future hospitalization costs in two Australian cities. Methods: The associations between daily hospitalization costs for respiratory diseases and temperatures in Sydney and Perth over the study period of 2010-2016 were analyzed using distributed lag non-linear models. Future hospitalization costs for respiratory diseases were estimated based on three predicted climate change scenarios - RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Results: The estimated respiratory disease hospitalization costs attributable to non-optimum ambient temperatures increased from 493.2 million Australian dollars (AUD) in 2010s to more than 700 million AUD in 2050s in Sydney, and from 98.0 million AUD to about 150 million AUD during the same period in Perth, in large part due to population growth. In the context of climate change, the current cold attributable fraction in Sydney (23.7%) and Perth (11.2%) is estimated to decline by the middle of this century to (18.1-20.1%) and (5.1-6.6%) respectively, while the heat-attributable fraction for respiratory disease is expected to gradually increase from 2.6% up to 5.5% in Perth. Conclusions: This study found both cold and hot temperatures increased the overall hospitalization costs for respiratory diseases in two major Australian cities, although the attributable fractions varied. The largest contributor was cold temperatures. While respiratory disease hospitalization costs will increase in the future, climate change will result in a decrease in the cold attributable fraction and an increase in the heat attributable fraction, depending on the location.

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Climate, ticks and disease

10.1079/9781789249637.0000 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Spatial Distribution ◽

Disease Ecology ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Expert Opinions ◽

The World ◽

Host Pathogen ◽

The Future ◽

Impacts Of Climate Change

Abstract This book is a collection of 77 expert opinions arranged in three sections. Section 1 on "Climate" sets the scene, including predictions of future climate change, how climate change affects ecosystems, and how to model projections of the spatial distribution of ticks and tick-borne infections under different climate change scenarios. Section 2 on "Ticks" focuses on ticks (although tick-borne pathogens creep in) and whether or not changes in climate affect the tick biosphere, from physiology to ecology. Section 3 on "Disease" focuses on the tick-host-pathogen biosphere, ranging from the triangle of tick-host-pathogen molecular interactions to disease ecology in various regions and ecosystems of the world. Each of these three sections ends with a synopsis that aims to give a brief overview of all the expert opinions within the section. The book concludes with Section 4 (Final Synopsis and Future Predictions). This synopsis attempts to summarize evidence provided by the experts of tangible impacts of climate change on ticks and tick-borne infections. In constructing their expert opinions, contributors give their views on what the future might hold. The final synopsis provides a snapshot of their expert thoughts on the future.

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The role of glacier dynamics and threshold definition in the characterisation of future streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments

10.5194/hess-2017-119 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Marit Van Tiel ◽

Adriaan J. Teuling ◽

Niko Wanders ◽

Marc J. P. Vis ◽

Kerstin Stahl ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Time Scales ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Glacier Area ◽

Short Term ◽

Drought Characteristics ◽

Wide Range ◽

Glacier Dynamics ◽

The Future

Abstract. Glaciers are essential hydrological reservoirs, storing and releasing water at various time scales. Short-term variability in glacier melt is one of the causes of streamflow droughts, defined as below normal water availabilities. Streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments have a wide range of interlinked causing factors related to precipitation and temperature on short and long time scales. Climate change affects glacier storage capacity, with resulting consequences for discharge regimes and drought. Future projections of streamflow drought in glacierised basins can, however, strongly depend on the modelling strategies and analysis approaches applied. Here, we examine the effect of different approaches, concerning the glacier modelling and the drought threshold, on the characterisation of streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments. Streamflow is simulated with the HBV-light model for two case study catchments, the Nigardsbreen catchment in Norway and the Wolverine catchment in Alaska, and two future climate change scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Two types of glacier modelling are applied, a constant and dynamical glacier area conceptualisation. Streamflow droughts are identified with the variable threshold level method and their characteristics are compared between two periods, a historical (1975–2004) and future (2071–2100) period. Two existing threshold approaches to define future droughts are employed, (1) the threshold from the historical period and (2) a transient threshold approach, whereby the threshold adapts every year in the future to the changing regimes. Results show that drought characteristics differ among the combinations of glacier area modelling and thresholds. The historical threshold combined with a dynamical glacier area projects extreme increases in drought severity in the future, caused by the regime shift due to a reduction in glacier area. The historical threshold combined with a constant glacier area results in a drastic decrease of the number of droughts. The drought characteristics between future and historic periods are more similar when the transient threshold is used, for both glacier dynamics conceptualisations. With the transient threshold causing factors of future droughts, can be analysed. This study revealed the different effects of methodological choices on future streamflow drought projections and it highlights how the options can be used to analyse different aspects of future droughts: the transient threshold for analysing future drought processes, the historical threshold to assess changes between periods, the constant glacier area to analyse the effect of short term climate variability on droughts and the dynamical glacier area to model realistic future discharges under climate change.

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Projected Future Temporal Trends of Two Different Urban Heat Islands in Athens (Greece) under Three Climate Change Scenarios: A Statistical Approach

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos11060637 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (6) ◽

pp. 637 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Tim van der Schriek ◽

Konstantinos V. Varotsos ◽

Christos Giannakopoulos ◽

Dimitra Founda

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Air Pollution ◽

Air Temperature ◽

Temporal Trends ◽

Temperature Data ◽

Rural Site ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

The Future ◽

The Impact

This is the first study to look at future temporal urban heath island (UHI) trends of Athens (Greece) under different UHI intensity regimes. Historical changes in the Athens UHI, spanning 1971–2016, were assessed by contrasting two air temperature records from stable meteorological stations in contrasting urban and rural settings. Subsequently, we used a five-member regional climate model (RCM) sub-ensemble from EURO-CORDEX with a horizontal resolution of 0.11° (~12 × 12 km) to simulate air temperature data, spanning the period 1976–2100, for the two station sites. Three future emissions scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5) were implanted in the simulations after 2005 covering the period 2006–2100. Two 20-year historical reference periods (1976–1995 and 1996–2015) were selected with contrasting UHI regimes; the second period had a stronger intensity. The daily maximum and minimum air temperature data (Tmax and Tmin) for the two reference periods were perturbed to two future periods, 2046–2065 and 2076–2095, under the three RCPs, by applying the empirical quantile mapping (eqm) bias-adjusting method. This novel approach allows us to assess future temperature developments in Athens under two UHI intensity regimes that are mainly forced by differences in air pollution and heat input. We found that the future frequency of days with Tmax > 37 °C in Athens was only different from rural background values under the intense UHI regime. Thus, the impact of heatwaves on the urban environment of Athens is dependent on UHI intensity. There is a large increase in the future frequency of nights with Tmin > 26 °C in Athens under all UHI regimes and climate scenarios; these events remain comparatively rare at the rural site. This large urban amplification of the frequency of extremely hot nights is likely caused by air pollution. Consequently, local mitigation policies aimed at decreasing urban atmospheric pollution are expected to be highly effective in reducing urban temperatures and extreme heat events in Athens under future climate change scenarios. Such policies directly have multiple benefits, including reduced electricity (energy) needs, improved living quality and strong health advantages (heat- and pollution-related illness/deaths).

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The City Pack - the co-production of an urban climate service providing local summaries of a city's future climate

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6236 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Elizabeth Fuller ◽

Claire Scannell ◽

Victoria Ramsey ◽

Rebecca Parfitt ◽

Nicola Golding

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Urban Climate ◽

City Council ◽

Future Climate ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Climate Services ◽

The Future ◽

Climate Service ◽

The City

In 2018, the UN estimated that around 55% of the world&#8217;s population currently live within urban areas, with this value projected to rise to 60% by 2030 (United Nations, 2018). High levels of urbanisation, coupled with an increasing trend in extreme weather under future climate change scenarios, combine to create significant challenges to increasing urban resilience for the future (Masson et al., 2020).Urban climate services provide tools to support decision making at a range of scales across the city, from day-to-day operations to informing urban design over longer timescales (Grimmond et al., 2015). Whilst urban climate services may be developed at a range of scales (Grimmond et al., 2020), this presentation looks at a prototype climate service which provides long-term climate change projections at the city-specific scale. The &#8216;City Pack&#8217; was developed through a process of co-production, in which project development aims to move away from a one-way push of scientific information, to a two-way collaborative process of knowledge construction and sharing (Vincent et al., 2019).This &#8216;City Pack&#8217; service was co-developed by the Met Office and Bristol City Council following an assessment of the Council&#8217;s climate information needs. The City Pack comprises of three non-technical factsheets which explain how the climate of Bristol has changed and will continue to change into the 21st Century based on the UKCP climate projections. The City Pack&#8217;s primary aims are to raise awareness of how a cities climate may change in the future and to inform the development of city resilience whilst also providing a tool to be used by city stakeholders to raise awareness of climate change across the council. The audience for the City Pack therefore includes city officials, city planners and the general public. The Bristol City Pack has since provided an evidence base for the Bristol City Council Climate Change Risk Assessment and informed Bristol&#8217;s Climate Strategy. In addition, the City Pack has been used to engage with the council&#8217;s wider stakeholders and also as a communication and training tool. As such, whilst the co-production of a climate service may be time and resource intensive, the process may also be rewarded with the production of a highly tailored and user-relevant tool.Following the success of the prototype &#8216;City Pack&#8217; service for Bristol City Council, the Met Office are continuing to produce City Packs for additional cities across the UK, and also in China. The project is seeking to ascertain if services which are co-produced with and bespoke to one set of stakeholders, may provide an equally valuable service for other cities and if so, how can we make these services scalable.

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Prediction of the Suitable Area of the Chinese White Pines (Pinus subsect. Strobus) under Climate Changes and Implications for Their Conservation

Forests ◽

10.3390/f11090996 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 996

Author(s):

Lele Lin ◽

Jian He ◽

Lei Xie ◽

Guofa Cui

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Current Distribution ◽

Future Climate ◽

Ex Situ ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

White Pine ◽

Chinese White ◽

The Future ◽

Pine Species

White pines (Pinus subsect. Strobus) play important roles in forest ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere. Species of this group are narrowly distributed or endangered in China. In this study, we used a species distribution model (SDM) to project and predict the distribution patterns of the 12 species of Chinese white pine under a variety of paleoclimatic and future climate change scenarios based on 39 high-resolution environmental variables and 1459 distribution records. We also computed the centroid shift, range expansion/contraction, and suitability change of the current distribution area to assess the potential risk to each species in the future. The modeling results revealed that the suitable habitat of each species is consistent with but slightly larger than its actual distribution range and that temperature, precipitation, and UV radiation are important determining factors for the distribution of different white pine species. The results indicate that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) greatly affected the current distribution of the Chinese white pine species. Additionally, it was predicted that under the future climate change scenarios, there will be a reduction in the area of habitats suitable for P. armandii, P. morrisonicola, and P. mastersiana. Furthermore, some of the current distribution sites of P. armandii, P. kwangtungensis, P. mastersiana, P. morrisonicola, P. sibirica, and P. wallichiana were predicted to become more unsuitable under these scenarios. These results indicate that some Chinese white pine species, such as P. armandii, P. morrisonicola, and P. mastersiana, may have a very high risk of population shrinkage in the future. Overall, this study provided relevant data for the long-term conservation (both in situ and ex situ) and sustainable management of Chinese white pine species.

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Evaluation of Climate Change Impacts on the Potential Distribution of Styrax sumatrana in North Sumatra, Indonesia

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13020462 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 462

Author(s):

Muhammad Hadi Saputra ◽

Han Soo Lee

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Future Climate ◽

Ex Situ ◽

Conservation Strategies ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Slope Aspect ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

The Future ◽

Suitable Area ◽

North Sumatra

This study aims to assess the impact of climate change on the distribution of Styrax sumatrana in North Sumatra by applying the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model with biophysical factors (elevation, slope, aspect, and soil), climatic factors (19 bioclimate data sets for 2050 and 2070), and anthropogenic factors (land use land cover (LULC) changes in 2050 and 2070). The future climate data retrieved and used are the output of four climate models from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), namely, the CCSM4, CNRM-CM5, MIROC5, and MRI-CGCM3 models, under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The MaxEnt modelling results showed the importance of the mean temperature of the coldest quarter and the LULC variables. Styrax sumatrana rely on environmental conditions with air temperatures ranging from 13 to 19 °C. The potentially suitable land types for Styrax sumatrana are shrubs, gardens, and forests. The future predictions show that the suitable habitat for Styrax sumatrana is predicted to decrease to 3.87% in 2050 and to 3.54% in 2070 under the RCP4.5 scenario. Under the RCP8.5 scenario, the suitable area is predicted to decrease to 3.04% in 2050 and to 1.36% in 2070, respectively. The degradation of the suitable area is mainly due to increasing temperature and deforestation in future predictions. The modelling results illustrate that the suitable habitats of Styrax sumatrana are likely to be reduced under future climate change scenarios or lost in 2070 under the RCP8.5 scenario. The potential future extinction of this species should alert authorities to formulate conservation strategies. Results also demonstrated key variables that should be used for formulating ex situ conservation strategies.

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Response of the Carbon Budget of Global Forest Ecosystems to Future Climate Change

10.21203/rs.3.rs-120157/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hongfei Xie ◽

JUNFANG ZHAO ◽

Jianyong Ma ◽

Weixiong Yan

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Southern Hemisphere ◽

Northern Hemisphere ◽

Carbon Budget ◽

Forest Ecosystems ◽

Carbon Sink ◽

Future Climate ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

The Future

Abstract Background At present, global warming is an indisputable fact, and more and more attention has been paid to the impacts of climate warming on global ecological environments. Forests play increasing significant roles in regulating global carbon balance and mitigating climate change. Therefore, to understand the response mechanisms of the carbon budget of global forest ecosystems to future climate change, an improved version of the FORest ecosystem Carbon budget model for CHiNa (FORCCHN) and future Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 were applied in this study.Results The global forest ecosystems will play a major role in the carbon sink under the future two climate change scenarios. In particular, the average carbon budget (namely the Net Ecosystem Productivity, NEP) of global forest ecosystems under RCP4.5 scenario was estimated to be 0.017 kg(C)·m− 2·yr− 1 from 2006 to 2100. The future carbon sink areas of global forest ecosystems will increase significantly. Under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate scenarios, the carbon sink areas of global forest ecosystems during 2026–2100 would be significantly higher than those in 2006–2025, with increases of 83.16–87.26% and 23.53–29.70%, respectively. The impacts of future climate change on NEP of global forest ecosystems will significantly vary between different regions. The NEP of forests will be enhanced in the northern hemisphere and significantly weakened in the southern hemisphere under the future two climate change scenarios. The carbon sink regions of global forests will be mainly distributed in the middle and high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. In particular, the forests'NEP in northeastern and central Asia, northern Europe and western North America will increase by 40%~80%. However, the NEP of forests will decrease by 20%~40% in the most regions of the southern hemisphere. In northern South America and central Africa, the forests' NEP will be reduced by more than 40%.Conclusions The global forest ecosystems will play a major role in the carbon sink under the future two climate change scenarios. However, the NEP of forests will be enhanced in the northern hemisphere and significantly weakened in the southern hemisphere. In the future, in some areas of southern hemisphere, where the forests' NEP was predicted to be reduced, some measures for improving forest carbon sink, such as strengthening forest tending, enforcing prohibiting deforestation laws and scientific forest management, and so on, should be implemented to ensure immediate mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

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Drought occurrence under future climate change scenarios in the Zard River basin, Iran

Water Science & Technology Water Supply ◽

10.2166/ws.2020.367 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Pedram Mahdavi ◽

Hossein Ghorbanizadeh Kharazi ◽

Hossein Eslami ◽

Narges Zohrabi ◽

Majid Razaz

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

River Basin ◽

Hydrological Drought ◽

Future Climate ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Future Period ◽

Drought Assessment ◽

The Future ◽

The Impact

Abstract Global warming affected by human activities causes changes in the regime of rivers. Rivers are one of the most vital sources that supply fresh water. Therefore, management, planning, and proper use of rivers will be crucial for future climate change conditions. This study investigated the monitoring of hydrological drought in a future period to examine the impact of climate change on the discharging flow of the Zard River basin in Iran. Zard River is an important supplier of fresh and agricultural water in a vast area of Khuzestan province in Iran. A continuous rainfall-runoff model based on Soil Moisture Accounting (SMA) algorithm was applied to simulate the discharge flow under 10 scenarios (obtained from LARS-WG.6 software) of future climate change. Then, the Stream-flow Drought Index (SDI) and the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) were calculated for each climate change scenario for the future period (2041–2060). The results of the meteorological drought assessment showed that near normal and moderate droughts had higher proportions among other drought conditions. Moreover, the hydrological drought assessment showed the occurrence of two new droughts (severe and extreme) conditions for the future period (2041–2060) that has never happened in the past (1997–2016).

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Predicting the Potential Habitat of Three Endangered Species of Carpinus genus under Climate Change and Human Activity

Forests ◽

10.3390/f12091216 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (9) ◽

pp. 1216

Author(s):

Jiejie Sun ◽

Lei Feng ◽

Tongli Wang ◽

Xiangni Tian ◽

Xiao He ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Endangered Species ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Potential Habitat ◽

Human Footprint ◽

Precipitation Seasonality ◽

The Future ◽

Potential Habitats ◽

The Impact

The impact of climate change and human activities on endangered plants has been a serious concern in forest ecology. Some Carpinus plants have become extinct. Thus, we need to pay more attention to the Carpinus plants that are not yet extinct but are endangered. Here, we employed the species distribution model (SDM) considering different climate change scenarios and human footprint to test the potential habitat changes of three Carpinus species (C. oblongifolia, C. tientaiensis, and C. purpurinervis) in the future. Our results showed that the mean diurnal range of temperature (MDRT), isothermality, mean temperature of wettest quarter, and human footprint were the most influential factors determining the distribution of C. oblongifolia. Precipitation seasonality (coefficient of variation), MDRT, and precipitation of driest quarter were the most important climatic factors affecting C. tientaiensis. The minimum temperature of the coldest month was the most important factor in the distribution of C. purpurinervis. Our results also showed that the three species had different adaptability and habitat change trends under the future climate change scenarios, although they belong to the same genus. The potential habitats of C. oblongifolia would expand in the future, while the potential habitats of C. tientaiensis and C. purpurinervis would decrease for the same period. The predicted changes of these three endangered species on temporal and spatial patterns could provide a theoretical basis for their conservation strategies.

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Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture and Food Security

International Journal of Disease Control and Containment for Sustainability ◽

10.4018/ijdccs.2016010103 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 32-46

Author(s):

Sunil Londhe

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Food Security ◽

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide ◽

Agricultural Sector ◽

Agricultural Research ◽

Great Depth ◽

Mitigation Measures ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

The Future

Many studies have demonstrated the sensitivities of crop yield to a changing climate, a major challenge for the agricultural research community is to relate these findings to the wider societal concern with food security. Apart from few exceptions, the likely impacts of climate change on agricultural sector in the future are not understood in any great depth. There are many concerns as to how changes in temperature, rainfall and atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations will interact in relation to agricultural productivity. The present article is an attempt to distil about the likely effects of climate change on food security and nutrition in coming decades. The consequences of climate change on various important aspects of agriculture are discussed and summarized. The article also discusses the analysis on the possible mitigation measures and adaptations for agriculture production in the future climate change scenarios.

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