The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change

Medical Research Council-UK (Grant ID: MR/M022625/1); Natural Environment Research Council UK (Grant ID: NE/R009384/1); European Union’s Horizon 2020 Project Exhaustion (Grant ID: 820655); N. Scovronick was supported by the NIEHS-funded HERCULES Center (P30ES019776); Y. Honda was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency, Japan (JPMEERF15S11412); J. Jaakkola was supported by Academy of Finland (Grant No. 310372); V. Huber was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Grant ID: PCIN-2017-046) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant ID: 01LS1201A2); J Kysely and A. Urban were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (Grant ID: 20-28560S); J. Madureira was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) (SFRH/BPD/115112/2016); S. Rao and F. di Ruscio were supported by European Union’s Horizon 2020 Project EXHAUSTION (Grant ID: 820655); M. Hashizume was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) as part of SICORP, Grant Number JPMJSC20E4; Y. Guo was supported by the Career Development Fellowship of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (#APP1163693); S. Lee was support by the Early Career Fellowship of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (#APP1109193)

Harnessing the NEON data revolution to advance open environmental science with a diverse and data-capable community

It is a critical time to reflect on the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) science to date as well as envision what research can be done right now with NEON (and other) data and what training is needed to enable a diverse user community. NEON became fully operational in May 2019 and has pivoted from planning and construction to operation and maintenance. In this overview, the history of and foundational thinking around NEON are discussed. A framework of open science is described with a discussion of how NEON can be situated as part of a larger data constellation—across existing networks and different suites of ecological measurements and sensors. Next, a synthesis of early NEON science, based on >100 existing publications, funded proposal efforts, and emergent science at the very first NEON Science Summit (hosted by Earth Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder in October 2019) is provided. Key questions that the ecology community will address with NEON data in the next 10 yr are outlined, from understanding drivers of biodiversity across spatial and temporal scales to defining complex feedback mechanisms in human–environmental systems. Last, the essential elements needed to engage and support a diverse and inclusive NEON user community are highlighted: training resources and tools that are openly available, funding for broad community engagement initiatives, and a mechanism to share and advertise those opportunities. NEON users require both the skills to work with NEON data and the ecological or environmental science domain knowledge to understand and interpret them. This paper synthesizes early directions in the community’s use of NEON data, and opportunities for the next 10 yr of NEON operations in emergent science themes, open science best practices, education and training, and community building

The SSC: A decade of climate-health research and future directions

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the development of the revised Spatial Synoptic Classification, the "SSC", by Scott Sheridan. This daily weather-type classification scheme has become one of the key analytical tools implemented in a diverse range of climatological investigations, including analysis of air quality variability, human health, vegetation growth, precipitation and snowfall trends, and broader analyses of historical and future climatic variability and trends. The continued and expanding use of the SSC motivates a review and comparison of the system's research and geographic foci to date, with the goal of identifying promising areas for future efforts, particularly within the context of human health and climate change. This review also assesses how the SSC has complemented and compares with other current environmental epidemiological studies in weather and health. © 2013 ISB

Household accessibility to heat refuges: Residential air conditioning, public cooled space, and walkability

Access to air conditioned space is critical for protecting urban populations from the adverse effects of heat exposure. Yet there remains fairly limited knowledge of the penetration of private (home air conditioning) and distribution of public (cooling centers and commercial space) cooled space across cities. Furthermore, the deployment of government-sponsored cooling centers is likely to be inadequately informed with respect to the location of existing cooling resources (residential air conditioning and air conditioned public space), raising questions of the equitability of access to heat refuges. We explore the distribution of private and public cooling resources and access inequities at the household level in two major US urban areas: Los Angeles County, California and Maricopa County, Arizona (whose county seat is Phoenix). We evaluate the presence of in-home air conditioning and develop a walking-based accessibility measure to air conditioned public space using a combined cumulative opportunities-gravity approach. We find significant variations in the distribution of residential air conditioning across both regions which are largely attributable to building age and inter/intra-regional climate differences. There are also regional disparities in walkable access to public cooled space. At average walking speeds, we find that official cooling centers are only accessible to a small fraction of households (3% in Los Angeles, 2% in Maricopa) while a significantly higher number of households (80% in Los Angeles, 39% in Maricopa) have access to at least one other type of public cooling resource such as a library or commercial establishment. Aggregated to a neighborhood level, we find that there are areas within each region where access to cooled space (either public or private) is limited which may increase heat-related health risks

Greater aridity increases the magnitude of urban nighttime vegetation-derived air cooling

High nighttime urban air temperatures increase health risks and economic vulnerability of people globally. While recent studies have highlighted nighttime heat mitigation effects of urban vegetation, the magnitude and variability of vegetation-derived urban nighttime cooling differs greatly among cities. We hypothesize that urban vegetation-derived nighttime air cooling is driven by vegetation density whose effect is regulated by aridity through increasing transpiration. We test this hypothesis by deploying microclimate sensors across eight United States cities and investigating relationships of nighttime air temperature and urban vegetation throughout a summer season. Urban vegetation decreased nighttime air temperature in all cities. Vegetation cooling magnitudes increased as a function of aridity, resulting in the lowest cooling magnitude of 1.4 °C in the most humid city, Miami, FL, and 5.6 °C in the most arid city, Las Vegas, NV. Consistent with the differences among cities, the cooling effect increased during heat waves in all cities. For cities that experience a summer monsoon, Phoenix and Tucson, AZ, the cooling magnitude was larger during the more arid pre-monsoon season than during the more humid monsoon period. Our results place the large differences among previous measurements of vegetation nighttime urban cooling into a coherent physiological framework dependent on plant transpiration. This work informs urban heat risk planning by providing a framework for using urban vegetation as an environmental justice tool and can help identify where and when urban vegetation has the largest effect on mitigating nighttime temperatures. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]