Li Tiantian;Ban Jie;Horton Radleym.;Bader Daniela.;Huang Ganlin;Sun Qinghua;Kinney Patrickl.

 

[Li, Tiantian; Huang, Ganlin] Beijing Normal Univ, State Key Lab Earth Surface Proc & Resource, Beijing 100875, Peoples R China.

[Li, Tiantian; Ban, Jie] Chinese Ctr Dis Control & Prevent, Inst Environm Hlth & Related Prod Safety, Beijing 100050, Peoples R China.

[Horton, Radley M.; Bader, Daniel A.] Columbia Univ, Ctr Climate Syst Res, New York, NY 10027 USA.

[Kinney, Patrick L.] Columbia Univ, Mailman Sch Publ Hlth, New York, NY 10032 USA.

 

ABSTRACT: Because heat-related health effects tend to become more serious at higher temperatures, there is an urgent need to determine the mortality projection of specific heat-sensitive diseases to provide more detailed information regarding the variation of the sensitivity of such diseases. In this study, the specific mortality of cardiovascular and respiratory disease in Beijing was initially projected under five different global-scale General Circulation Models (GCMs) and two Representative Concentration Pathways scenarios (RCPs) in the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s compared to the 1980s. Multi-model ensembles indicated cardiovascular mortality could increase by an average percentage of 18.4%, 47.8%, and 69.0% in the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s under RCP 4.5, respectively, and by 16.6%, 73.8% and 134% in different decades respectively, under RCP 8.5 compared to the baseline range. The same increasing pattern was also observed in respiratory mortality. The heat-related deaths under the RCP8.5 scenario were found to reach a higher number and to increase more rapidly during the 21st century compared to the RCP4.5 scenario, especially in the 2050s and the 2080s. The projection results show potential trends in cause-specific mortality in the context of climate change, and provide support for public health interventions tailored to specific climate-related future health risks.

Published in SCIENTIFIC REPORTS.2015,5(, DOI: 10.1038/srep11441