Exhaustion

The report “Interactive Effects of High Temperature and Air Pollution in Europe” was prepared as a milestone by researchers in the EU Project EXHAUSTION*. This report summarises the evidence on the interactive effects of high temperature and various air pollutants on heart- and lung-related deaths and diseases (cardiopulmonary (CPD) mortality and morbidity) across Europe. The study was conducted at the city, small-area (e.g. suburban areas or municipalities), and individual level. The findings highlight the urgency in improving air quality across Europe, and alert stakeholders and policymakers that climate change adaptation measures need to be also taken into account to protect vulnerable subgroups and thereby increase European resilience towards climate change.

European air quality has worsened in recent decades as a consequence of increased anthropogenic emissions, in particular from the power generation sector. It is mainly associated with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, along with morbidity and even mortality. The mitigation scenario (REN80-P2050) demonstrates that the effects of a mitigation policy of increasing the ratio of renewable sources in the energy mix could lead to a decrease of over 60 000 (95 % CI 48 500–70 900) annual PD for the year 2050 (a decrease of −4 % in comparison with the no-mitigation scenario FUT-P2050). Despite the uncertainties inherent in future estimations, this contribution reveals the need for governments and public entities to take action and choose air pollution mitigation policies.

We investigate the novel use of summer temperature-mortality associations established by these models for monitoring heat-related deaths in regions in England in near real time. For four summers in the period 2011–2020, we find that coupling these associations with observed daily mean temperatures results in England-wide heatwave mortality estimates that are consistent with the excess deaths estimated by UK Health Security Agency. However, our results for 2013, 2018 and 2020 highlight that the lagged effects of heat and characteristics of individual summers contribute to disagreement between the two methods.

Previous studies have reported a decrease in air pollution levels following the enforcement of lockdown measures during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these investigations were mostly based on simple pre-post comparisons using past years as a reference and did not assess the role of different policy interventions. This study contributes to knowledge by quantifying the association between specific lockdown measures and the decrease in NO2, O3, PM2.5, and PM10 levels across 47 European cities.

The report “Effects of air Temperature on Cardiopulmonary Mortality and Morbidity in Europe” was prepared as a milestone of the EU Project EXHAUSTION. It summarizes the evidence on the effects of different levels and changes in ambient air temperature on cardiopulmonary (CPD) mortality and morbidity across Europe and puts a spotlight on the vulnerable and susceptible population. It can help stakeholders and policymakers to plan adaptation measures to protect the vulnerable and susceptible population and increase European resilience towards climate change and extreme weather events.

The objective of this paper is to explore the evidence of adaptive mechanisms for cardiorespiratory diseases regarding extreme temperatures and air pollution by comparing the results of two systematic literature review (SLR) processes sharing the same initial research question but led by two research groups with different academic backgrounds working in the same multidisciplinary team.

Climate change and air pollution can interact to amplify risks to human health and crop production. Closer integration of climate change and air pollution both in terms of impact assessment for human health and agricultural productivity and respective policy development is needed.

Many regions of the world are now facing more frequent and unprecedentedly large wildfires. However, the association between wildfire-related PM2·5 and mortality has not been well characterised. We aimed to comprehensively assess the association between short-term exposure to wildfire-related PM2·5 and mortality across various regions of the world.

Short-term exposure to wildfire-related PM2·5 was associated with increased risk of mortality. Urgent action is needed to reduce health risks from the increasing wildfires.

This study suggests that seasonality of mortality is importantly driven by temperature, most evidently in temperate/continental climate zones, and that warmer locations show stronger seasonal variations in mortality, which is related to a stronger effect of temperature.

Non-optimal temperatures are associated with a substantial mortality burden, which varies spatiotemporally. Our findings will benefit international, national, and local communities in developing preparedness and prevention strategies to reduce weather-related impacts immediately and under climate change scenarios.

Climate change affects human health; however, there have been no large-scale, systematic efforts to quantify the heat-related human health impacts that have already occurred due to climate change. Here, we use empirical data from 732 locations in 43 countries to estimate the mortality burdens associated with the additional heat exposure that has resulted from recent human-induced warming, during the period 1991–2018. Across all study countries, we find that 37.0% (range 20.5–76.3%) of warm-season heat-related deaths can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change and that increased mortality is evident on every continent. Burdens varied geographically but were of the order of dozens to hundreds of deaths per year in many locations. Our findings support the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change.

Global warming is leading to increased heat stress in many regions around the world. An extensive number of heat stress indicators (HSIs) has been developed to measure the associated impacts on human health.

Urbanization and ongoing climate change increase the exposure of the populations to heat stress, and the urban heat island (UHI) effect may magnify heat-related mortality, especially during heatwaves.

The lockdown response to COVID-19 has resulted in an unprecedented reduction in global economic activity and associated air pollutant levels, especially from a decline in land transportation.

Reliable projections of extremes by climate models are becoming increasingly important in the context of climate change and associated societal impacts.

Various retrospective studies have reported on the increase of mortality risk due to higher diurnal temperature range (DTR). This study projects the effect of DTR on future mortality across 445 communities in 20 countries and regions.

Data from satellites, reanalysis, and chemical transport models offer additional information used to reconstruct pollution concentrations at high spatio-temporal resolutions.

Extreme heat events are now more frequent in many parts of the world as a result of climate change. The combined effects of heat, air pollution, individual age, and socioeconomic and health status need to be considered in order to prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases effectively.

Air conditioning has been proposed as one of the key factors explaining reductions of heat-related mortality risks observed in the last decades. However, direct evidence is still limited.