Classifying heatwaves: Developing health-based models to predict high-mortality versus moderate United States heatwaves.

ABSTRACT: Heatwaves are divided between moderate, more common heatwaves and rare "high-mortality" heatwaves that have extremely large health effects per day, which we define as heatwaves with a 20% or higher increase in mortality risk. Better projections of the expected frequency of and exposure to these separate types of heatwaves could help communities optimize heat mitigation and response plans and gauge the potential benefits of limiting climate change. Whether a heatwave is high-mortality or moderate could depend on multiple heatwave characteristics, including intensity, length, and timing. We created heatwave classification models using a heatwave training dataset created using recent (1987-2005) health and weather data from 82 large US urban communities. We built twenty potential classificati

SUBMITTER: Anderson GB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5881918 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature