GH003-03
Projection of Temperature-Related Excess Mortality by Integrating Population Adaptability under Climate Change in China

Wednesday, 9 December 2020: 07:06
Virtual
Tiantian Li1, Qing Wang2, Zhiying Sun1 and Chen Chen1, (1)National Institute of Environmental Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China, (2)National Institute of Environmental Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental health risk assessment, Beijing, China
Abstract:
Increasing temperatures under changing climate is one of the major public health concerns in the 21st century. Given the need to better estimate local burdens of diseases related to temperature, this study aims to project the future temperature-related mortality risk in 105 counties of China with united socioeconomic scenarios.

We used two-stage analyses to obtain effect-modifiers between temperature-mortality relationships. We set three united socioeconomic development scenarios integrating eight effect-modifiers between temperature and mortality and make the projection based on the temperature scenarios from the GCMs and RCPs. The future temperature-mortality relationship curves were fitted and the number of deaths attributed to the net effect of temperature, heat effect and cold effect in 105 counties were estimated for each scenario. We also conducted stratified analyses by geographical regions.

The future curves of temperature and mortality projected for the 2050s and 2080s of all the scenarios show that, compared with the baseline period, the minimum mortality temperature (MMT) would rise, the future cold effect had an upward trend, and the heat effect had a decreasing trend, indicating that the adaptability to cold would decrease while to heat would increase under a changing climate. The future temperature-related excess mortality was projected to increase in the 2050s and decrease in the 2080s, with a few expectations among different GCMs. In the mid-level IPSL model as an example, the number of temperature-related excess mortalities would increase by 7.5%, 46.6% and 31.5% in the 2050s and decrease by 28.2%, 5.3% and 16.7% in the 2080s for the low-, medium- and high-speed scenarios, respectively, compared with the baseline period (2013-2017). The cold-related excess mortality had a similar trend as the temperature-related excess mortality, but the heat-related excess mortality showed a continuous rising trend, except for the low-speed scenarios. The medium-speed scenario was projected to have the least temperature-related excess mortality, which could be the most appropriate scenario for future China, providing an important policy implication.

Figure: Changes in temperature-related annual mortality in seven regions of China (%)

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