Casanueva Vicente, Ana

Fischer, Andreas

Kotlarski, Sven

Liniger, Mark

English

Fischer, Andreas M.

Liniger, Mark A.

UCrea

EMS Annual Meeting AbstractsVol. 14, EMS2017-377, 2017© Author(s) 2017. CC Attribution 3.0 License.EMS Annual  Meeting     European Conference for Applied Meteorology and Cl imatology                                                                 Downscaling of heat stress indices in Europe: evaluation and climatechange projectionsAna Casanueva, Sven Kotlarski, Andreas Fischer, and Mark LinigerFederal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss, Zurich Airport, Switzerland (ana.casanueva@meteoswiss.ch)Dynamical and statistical downscaling techniques have been continuously applied to provide climate changeprojections for variables such as temperature and precipitation, but also for derived indices that can be directlyrelevant for various climate impact sectors. Within the Horizon 2020 project Heat-Shield, we evaluate and analyseclimate change projections for heat stress in Europe, focusing on the impact of heat on strategic industries(manufacturing, construction, transportation, tourism and agriculture). For this purpose, temperature, humidity,wind and radiation from the EURO-CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs) are combined into a singleheat-stress index: the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT). This index is the most widely used for working peopleand can be calculated directly from meteorological data, considering two different implementations for indoorsand outdoors settings. Moreover, it can be easily interpreted by ISO standards and adjusted depending on theclothing and activity type of the workers.Since heat stress occurs at a very local scale beyond the RCM resolution and, furthermore, RCMs areprone to systematic biases, a statistical downscaling and bias adjustment step is established by means of empiricalquantile mapping (QM) of the input variables of the WBGT. The corrections of the QM are calibrated consideringstation data at European scale from different data sources.The objectives of this study are twofold, 1) to test the ability of the separately bias corrected variables toreproduce the main characteristics of heat stress indices in present climate conditions and 2) to explore climatechange projections of heat stress indices on a European scale. The evaluation of QM in the historical simulationsshows that the inter-variable consistency is maintained by the univariate correction. Regarding climate changeprojections, the WBGT is expected to increase over the whole continent, and actions are advised to protectEuropean workers and industries from heat-related health and productivity impacts. We further discuss thepossible effect of QM on the WGBT climate change signal and the dependency of projected WBGT increases onchanges of the underlying meteorological variables.

Downscaling of heat stress indices in Europe: evaluation and climate change projections

https://repositorio.unican.es/xmlui/bitstream/10902/18593/3/Downscalingofheat.pdf

Downscaling of heat stress indices in Europe: evaluation and climate change projections

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