Casanueva Vicente, Ana

Kotlarski, Sven

Liniger, Mark A.

English

UCrea

Geophysical Research AbstractsVol. 19, EGU2017-9333, 2017EGU General Assembly 2017© Author(s) 2017. CC Attribution 3.0 License.Climate change projections of heat stress in Europe: From meteorologicalvariables to impacts on productivityAna Casanueva, Sven Kotlarski, and Mark A. LinigerFederal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland (ana.casanueva@meteoswiss.ch)Future climate change is likely to have important impacts in many socio-economic sectors. In particular, highersummer temperatures or more prolonged heat waves may be responsible for health problems and productivitylosses related to heat stress, especially affecting people exposed to such situations (e.g. working under outsidesettings or in non-acclimatized workplaces). Heat stress on the body under work load and consequently theirproductivity loss can be described through heat stress indices that are based on multiple meteorological parameterssuch as temperature, humidity, wind and radiation. Exploring the changes of these variables under a warmer cli-mate is of prime importance for the Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability communities. In particular, the H2020project HEAT-SHIELD aims at analyzing the impact of climate change on heat stress in strategic industries inEurope (manufacturing, construction, transportation, tourism and agriculture) within an inter-sectoral framework(climate scientists, biometeorologists, physiologists and stakeholders).In the present work we explore present and future heat stress over Europe using an ensemble of the state-of-the-art RCMs from the EURO-CORDEX initiative. Since RCMs cannot be directly used in impact studies dueto their partly substantial biases, a standard bias correction method (empirical quantile mapping) is applied tocorrect the individual variables that are then used to derive heat stress indices. The objectives of this study aretwofold, 1) to test the ability of the separately bias corrected variables to reproduce the main characteristics ofheat stress indices in present climate conditions and 2) to explore climate change projections of heat stress indices.We use the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) as primary heat stress index, considering two different versionsfor indoor (or in the shade, based on temperature and humidity conditions) and outdoor settings (including alsowind and radiation). The WBGT is the most widely used heat stress index for working people and can be easilyinterpreted by means of ISO standards. Within the HEAT-SHIELD project, climate change projections of theWBGT will be used to assess the impact of climate change on workers’ health and productivity.

Climate change projections of heat stress in Europa : from meteorological variables to impacts on productivity

https://repositorio.unican.es/xmlui/bitstream/10902/18330/3/Climatechangeprojections.pdf

Climate change projections of heat stress in Europa : from meteorological variables to impacts on productivity

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