Casanueva Vicente, Ana

Fischer, Andreas M.

Kotlarski, Sven

Liniger, Mark A.

Schwierz, Cornelia

English

UCrea

Geophysical Research AbstractsVol. 21, EGU2019-6701, 2019EGU General Assembly 2019© Author(s) 2019. CC Attribution 4.0 license.Climate change scenarios in use: Heat stress in SwitzerlandAna Casanueva, Sven Kotlarski, Andreas M. Fischer, Cornelia Schwierz, and Mark A. LinigerFederal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss, Zurich Airport, Switzerland (ana.casanueva@meteoswiss.ch)Global mean temperature is projected to increase until the end of the 21st century under all emission scenarios.Likewise, temperature extremes such as the highest daily temperature, the number of tropical nights or heat waveintensity and duration are projected to increase. These changes will ultimately affect biodiversity and humanbeings. Under hot conditions the human body is able to regulate its core temperature via sweat evaporation, butthis ability is reduced when air humidity is high. These conditions of high temperature and humidity invoke heatstress which is a major problem for vulnerable groups of the population and people exposed to such situations(e.g. working outside or without appropriate cooling systems). In this context, climate services play a crucial roleby bridging the gap between meteorological information and sustainable solutions to mitigate future heat stress.In the present work we explore the CH2018 Swiss climate scenarios (www.climate-scenarios.ch) in orderto present 1) climate change projections of heat stress considering different sources of uncertainty and 2)applications of such climate projections in the framework of climate services. Heat stress is expressed throughthe Wet Bulb Temperature (WBT), which is a relatively simple proxy for heat stress on the human body andwhich depends non-linearly on temperature and humidity. A large ensemble of state-of-the-art RCM simulationsfrom the EURO-CORDEX initiative is used to produce climate change projections of the WBT. Since raw RCMdatacannot be directly used in impact studies due to their coarse resolution and their partly substantial biases, astandard bias correction method (empirical quantile mapping) is applied to correct the individual variables that areused to derive the heat stress index.Climate change projections indicate increasing heat stress over Switzerland, which is accentuated towardsthe end of the century. High heat stress conditions might be about 3-5 times more frequent for the strongRCP8.5 emission scenario than for the RCP2.6 mitigation scenario by the end of the 21st century. An example ofapplication of the scenarios in the frame of climate services consists of the analysis of consecutive days with WBTabove a specific threshold as a proxy for the currently defined heat warnings. The projected increase of heat stressresults in more heat warnings, thus highlighting the importance of timely and precise prevention strategies in thecontext of heat-health action plans.

Climate change scenarios in use: Heat stress in Switzerland

https://repositorio.unican.es/xmlui/bitstream/10902/18594/3/Climatechangescenarios.pdf

Climate change scenarios in use: Heat stress in Switzerland

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