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This study is led by Dr. Cunrui Huang (Vanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua University). Heat waves cause a heavy disease burden by increasing the risk of mortality and morbidity, which has been exacerbated by global climate change. “In China, evidence documenting the impact of heat waves on the number of attributable deaths, spatio-temporal variability, and their driving factors is still limited, hampering understanding of dangerous heat waves,” says Huang.
Huang, along with his group member Chen and meteorology expert Zhao, tried to find out the spatial and temporal trends of heatwave-related deaths in China over the past four decades. The team performed event-based attributable loss estimation to quantify the gridded attributable deaths.
The team found that health risks from climate change were characterized by rapid growth, nonlinear evolution, and extremity. Heatwave-related deaths in China have increased dramatically by four times over the past four decades, with rising trends becoming more apparent over the past decade but with some year-to-year fluctuations. Regionally, east and central China generally had the most attributable deaths and accounted for more than 50% of deaths nationwide. Among provinces, heatwave-related deaths were highest in Shandong, followed by Henan, Hebei and Jiangsu.
The researchers also dissected the factors driving changes in attributable deaths. The rise in heatwave-related deaths in China over time was mainly due to increased heatwave exposure, followed by growth of population, population aging and rising primary mortality. Above all, aging population has played an increasingly important role in attributable deaths over time. This work could provide important information for Politician Developing effective mitigation and adaptation responses to increasing heat waves, particularly for the most vulnerable elderly populations.
The study was published in science bulletin.
Huiqi Chen et al., Spatial-temporal variation in mortality burden from heat waves in China, 1979–2020, science bulletin (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2022.05.006
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Citation: Investigating the Spatio-Temporal Variation in Mortality Burden from Heat Waves in China, 1979-2020 (2022, September 2), retrieved September 5, 2022 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09-spatiotemporal-variation -mortality-burden- attributable.html
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