From the Harvard School of Public Health , news that an extra 1°C temperature swing in summer will kill the elderly.
Summer temperature variability may increase mortality risk for elderly with chronic disease
Large day-to-day variations in temperature could result in thousands more deaths per year
Boston, MA – New research from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) suggests that seemingly small changes in summer temperature swings—as little as 1°C more than usual—may shorten life expectancy for elderly people with chronic medical conditions, and could result in thousands of additional deaths each year. While previous studies have focused on the short-term effects of heat waves, this is the first study to examine the longer-term effects of climate change on life expectancy.
The study will be published online April 9, 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The effect of temperature patterns on long-term mortality has not been clear to this point. We found that, independent of heat waves, high day to day variability in summer temperatures shortens life expectancy,” said Antonella Zanobetti, senior research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health at HSPH and lead author of the study. “This variability can be harmful for susceptible people.”
In recent years, scientists have predicted that climate change will not only increase overall world temperatures but will also increase summer temperature variability, particularly in mid-latitude regions such as the mid-Atlantic states of the U.S. and sections of countries such as France, Spain, and Italy. These more volatile temperature swings could pose a major public health problem, the authors note.
Previous studies have confirmed the association between heat waves and higher death rates. But this new research goes a step further. Although heat waves can kill in the short term, the authors say, even minor temperature variations caused by climate change may also increase death rates over time among elderly people with diabetes, heart failure, chronic lung disease, or those who have survived a previous heart attack.
The researchers used Medicare data from 1985 to 2006 to follow the long-term health of 3.7 million chronically ill people over age 65 living in 135 U.S. cities. They evaluated whether mortality among these people was related to variability in summer temperature, allowing for other things that might influence the comparison, such as individual risk factors, winter temperature variance, and ozone levels. They compiled results for individual cities, then pooled the results.
They found that, within each city, years when the summer temperature swings were larger had higher death rates than years with smaller swings. Each 1°C increase in summer temperature variability increased the death rate for elderly with chronic conditions between 2.8% and 4.0%, depending on the condition. Mortality risk increased 4.0% for those with diabetes; 3.8% for those who’d had a previous heart attack; 3.7% for those with chronic lung disease; and 2.8% for those with heart failure. Based on these increases in mortality risk, the researchers estimate that greater summer temperature variability in the U.S. could result in more than 10,000 additional deaths per year.
In addition, the researchers found the mortality risk was 1% to 2% greater for those living in poverty and for African Americans. The risk was 1% to 2% lower for people living in cities with more green space.
Mortality risk was higher in hotter regions, the researchers found. Noting that physiological studies suggest that the elderly and those with chronic conditions have a harder time than others adjusting to extreme heat, they say it’s likely these groups may also be less resilient than others to bigger-than-usual temperature swings.
“People adapt to the usual temperature in their city. That is why we don’t expect higher mortality rates in Miami than in Minneapolis, despite the higher temperatures,” said Joel Schwartz, professor of environmental epidemiology at HSPH and senior author of the paper. “But people do not adapt as well to increased fluctuations around the usual temperature. That finding, combined with the increasing age of the population, the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions such as diabetes, and possible increases in temperature fluctuations due to climate change, means that this public health problem is likely to grow in importance in the future.”
Support for the study was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
“Summer Temperature Variability and Long-term Survival Among Elderly People with Chronic Disease,” Antonella Zanobetti, Marie S. O’Neill, Carina J. Gronlund, and Joel D. Schwartz, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, online April 9, 2012.
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In research that I have been involved in (see for example, Davis et al., 2003), we found that people readily adapt to frequent heat waves, and consequently, the heat-related mortality rates decline as exposure increases. I describe our results, along with some new ones coming out of the Czech Republic which found the same thing in my current article posted at Master Resource “Is the EPA Endangering Public Health and Welfare by Attempting to Mitigate Extreme Weather?”
The new PNAS study looks at the impact of a rise in temperature variability, rather than simply temperature. When publishing our work, reviewers often wondered about the impact of increasing variability, and although it was not the major focus of our work, we did perform, in response to the queries, some cursory examinations of trends in variability and found them to be generally absent across the U.S. cities that we examined. We ultimately concluded that “However, the fundamental question of the differential mortality impact of prolonged exposure to high heat and humidity compared with highly variable weather conditions remains unresolved.”
I look forward to reading the new paper to see the details and what light they were able to shed on the issue.
-Chip Knappenberger
In research that I have been involved in (see for example, Davis et al., 2003), we found that people readily adapt to frequent heat waves, and consequently, the heat-related mortality rates decline as exposure increases. I describe our results, along with some new ones coming out of the Czech Republic which found the same thing, in my current article posted at Master Resource “Is the EPA Endangering Public Health and Welfare by Attempting to Mitigate Extreme Weather?”
The new PNAS study looks at the impact of a rise in temperature variability, rather than simply temperature. When publishing our work, reviewers often wondered about the impact of increasing variability, and although it was not the major focus of our work, we did perform some cursory examinations of trends in variability and found them to be generally absent across the U.S. cities that we examined. We ultimately concluded that “However, the fundamental question of the differential mortality impact of prolonged exposure to high heat and humidity compared with highly variable weather conditions remains unresolved.”
I look forward to reading the new paper to see the details and what light they were able to shed on the issue.
-Chip Knappenberger
Great news. If I lived in a temperature- static bubble, I would live for ever.
Yippee!
I would be willing to bet a bit of money that this is nonsense. Let us start with the Michael Mann premise that the world has already warmed 1C since 1850.
I guess this means that all those RVs with Canadian license tags I saw in Yuma Arizona mean that Yuma is the human equivalent of an Elephant’s Graveyard – the elderly migrate there to die.
What about the REDUCTION in elderly deaths in northern countries? is that included? What about a graph showing net deaths from COLDER temperatures?
Have we become such wimps that ANY change at all is bad? are we just by cosmic Luck at the cup of the Optimum? Please dont tell me the optimum is colder temperatures, millions could die, so the optimum must be at higher temperatures than preseent.
Out in the desert I have literally seen low 100’s in the day and upper teens at night with water bottles frozen solid. So that means 80+ temperature difference in the same day. This is not super uncommon. In certain conditions (especially in the winter) you can literally feel the temperature drop like a rock as the sun sets. We are outside in the elements all day and all night and the worst that happens is that we complain “*#@ur momisugly! @ur momisugly^&@ur momisugly its *@ur momisugly!@ur momisugly# COLD!!!!!”.
Of course the opposite happens in the morning. After the sun rises, the temperatures fire up like an oven within minutes. That’s why I park my Land Cruiser perpendicular to the sunrise with my sleeping bag along the side, so I can sleep in glorious shade for a few hours.
That would be a ~60 deg swing in C
I read an article in “The Onion” several years ago which pointed out that despite all the advances in medical science, the mortality rate still stands at 100%. Are these authors trying to be funny? An extra 10,000 deaths relative to what? All else being equal? But all else is NEVER equal.
Some questions come to mind:
* Of the “increased variability” how much is attributable to AGW? Is there any way to know?
* Wouldn’t a (relative) warm snap in winter cause the snow and ice to melt faster thus save lives through reduced accidents? If it would, how many?
* Or maybe a cold snap would cause the snow to last longer, increasing accidents. Of those accidents, how many would be fatal?
Unless these questions can be answered (and many more, with error bars smaller than the 10,000 deaths sited) I don’t see that this “study” has any value whatsoever.
See, this shows that the doctors are now conspiring with the scientists to impose an ecofacist world government and raise your taxes.
Already been published…
New Theory, CO2 makes you fat
It seems that it is only the climate change induced higher temperature that harms:
“even minor temperature variations caused by climate change may also increase death rates over time among elderly people with diabetes, heart failure, chronic lung disease, or those who have survived a previous heart attack.”
So any other cause for the temperature rise would not be harmfull.
I see that they claim the effect would be due to increased variability and not increased temperatures, so my reading is that all temperatures shift up by 1 degree then the temperature swings are the same in absolute terms (actually less expressed as a percentage of absolute temperature) and therefore should worry no-one.
The only real question raised by this output from the Harvard School of Public Health is why on Earth would any parent even consider investing over a quarter of a million dollars to send their young skull full of mush to such a place. Get the kid a used copy of “How to Lie with Statistics” and a four year internet hookup. Even if they never venture much beyond Google and Wikipedia, they ought to arrive at a much better educated state than the purveyors of this dreck seem to have after four years plus at this $50K+/yr indoctrination center.
The good news is that those of us living in developed countries have air conditioners.
The bad news is, the poorest parts of the world are often some of the hottest. The best thing we could do to save lives is to move forward with cheap, affordable energy where and when we can find it and not let notions of more expensive and unreliable “green energy” kill thousands of elderly throughout the world.
I would think that the Administration would welcome this news. After all, it would save a bundle on future Medicare and Social Security benefits; a two-fer. Oh, I forgot. They already have embraced something to save those benefits.
It’s called the Independent Payment Advisory Board: “IPAB” for short.
If anyone can find a link to this study, I’dlike to read it. If anyone has journal access, through work or school, I would appreciate a PDF of gthe study.
This study incontroversially demonstrated that funding from the EPA will produce whatever alarmist propaganda they wish.
Now where’s that male cow faecal matter button?
We need an exhaustive study of the economic impact and income redistribution caused by global warming–The biased science of global warming is benefiting authors and reviewers monetarily in the paper mill of academic research, promotions, and grant funding. Then there is the 1000 to 1 impact multiplier of bad public policy being imposed on a desperate world with developed countries in stagnation and developing countries picking sides.
My BS button broke! 😜
Cold has always killed far more than heat want a clue as to why , two words ‘sweat glands’ evlution has designed human to cope with heat far better than the cold .
Bernd Felsche says:
April 10, 2012 at 7:52 am
Those percentages if derived from RR are well below statistical significance.
In water safety, anything less than RR of 3, (200% increase in effect,) is considered statistically insignificant.
DaveE.
I have lived my entire six decades plus life in Minnesota and though I can’t site proof that it is the place in the world with the most variable weather, it certainly seems to be that for this country at least
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c457.html
Top 101 cities with the largest temperature differences during a year (population 50,000+)
We’ve got 15 of the top 25 on that list.
The notion that temperature variability is driver of increased mortality seems to be at odds with this list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy
The states of the Northern Plains, which have the most variable climate, also have the longest life expectancies. Minnesota, with our usual Nordic modesty and humility, has to settle for No. 2.
Look, enough already with the distorted “if it’s this way in the NE US / Western Europe then it is thus world wide” BS. So the NE US had a warm winter, so what? So the NE US layers massive UHI and overuse of HVAC onto their sticky continental climate and it’s horrible in summer. Whoop tee dooo!
This is complete nonsense. A person cannot tell the difference of 1 deg C without looking at a thermometer. These guys have jumped the shark to enable a political agenda.
These people need to get OUTSIDE! Just because their central heating keeps their homes and offices at 68 in the winter and their air conditioning keeps them at 72 in the summertime doesn’t mean the rest of the world must stay within that narrow range!
Oh, wait–that’s a difference of 4 degrees F (way more than their 1.8 degree F); sorry, I take it all back–they may be onto something!
/sarc