Casanueva Vicente, Ana

Fischer, Andreas M.

Flouris, Andreas D.

Kjellstrom, Tord

Kotlarski, Sven

Lemke, Bruno

Liniger, Mark A.

Nybo, Lars

Schwierz, Cornelia

English

UCrea

EMS Annual Meeting AbstractsVol. 15, EMS2018-414, 2018© Author(s) 2018. CC Attribution 4.0 License.Climate change projections of heat stress in Europe and impacts onlabour productivityAna Casanueva (1), Sven Kotlarski (1), Andreas M. Fischer (1), Andreas D. Flouris (2), Tord Kjellstrom (3,4),Bruno Lemke (5), Lars Nybo (6), Cornelia Schwierz (1), and Mark A. Liniger (1)(1) Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss, Zurich Airport, Switzerland(ana.casanueva@meteoswiss.ch), (2) FAME Laboratory, University of Thessaly, Greece 5, (3) Centre for TechnologicalResearch and Innovation (CETRI), Limmasol, Cyprus 6, (4) Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 7, (5)Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology, Nelson, New Zealand 8, (6) NEXS, University of Copenhagen, DenmarkHeat stress is favoured by hot and humid conditions, under which the ability of the human body to regulateits core temperature via sweat evaporation is reduced. Heat-related illnesses such as dehydration, hyperthermiaand heat stroke may be a direct consequence of these situations. Therefore, heat stress is a major problemfor vulnerable groups of the population and also constitutes an important threat for European workers withpotential major impacts on workers’ health and productivity. In this context, the H2020 project HEAT-SHIELD(http://www.heat-shield.eu/) aims at analyzing the impact of climate change on heat-related productivity instrategic industries in Europe within an inter-sectoral framework.The present work provides the climatological basis for HEAT-SHIELD. We assess the future change inheat stress using a well-defined heat stress index (the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature) that is implemented by theInternational Standards Organization (ISO) as regulatory index to measure the heat stress of working people. Thecomprehensive and state-of-the-art regional climate model (RCM) ensemble of the EURO-CORDEX initiative isexploited and statistically adapted for more than thousand locations in Europe to derive potential climate changesignals and various components of projection uncertainty (e.g. due to different RCMs, Global Circulation Models,Representative Concentration Pathways). Our results show that in large parts of Europe future heat stress willexceed critical levels for a physically-active human body. At the end of the 21st century, many European workerswill very likely be affected by severe heat stress, not only due to the increase of the mean and maximum heat stressvalues, but also because heat stress situations will become more frequent. A direct consequence of heat stress isthe loss in labour productivity especially for non-shaded conditions, which can result in a reduction of 15-60%summer working hours in the Mediterranean area under the strongest emission scenario for the end of the 21stcentury. Adapting European industries to these projected changes in addition to mitigation of climate change willlikely be required in order to prevent major consequences for the health of workers and the economic productivity.

Climate change projections of heat stress in Europe and impacts on labour productivity

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Climate change projections of heat stress in Europe and impacts on labour productivity

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