Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
The Claim:
The venerable NY Times carries this headline: “In India, Slight Rise in Temperatures Is Tied to Heat Wave Deaths”.
The study cited makes this conclusion:
“Mean temperatures across India have risen by more than 0.5°C over this period, with statistically significant increases in heat waves. Using a novel probabilistic model, we further show that the increase in summer mean temperatures in India over this period corresponds to a 146% increase in the probability of heat-related mortality events of more than 100 people.”
Rating:
Heat waves can be killers. More Heatwaves = More Deaths. Longer Heatwaves = More Deaths. Heat waves are prolonged periods of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity, especially in oceanic climate countries. Heat waves tend to carry off the old, infirm, and vulnerable young ….(there is more, but you have to wait for it).
The rest of the study, the story and the claims are the result of questionable statistics, which even the study authors admit (or brag) are “novel”.
The whole case can be made using nothing but the study’s figures:
The authors insist “Figure 1A shows that summer mean temperatures have increased substantially from 1960 to 2009. The time series exhibits a statistically significant (95% confidence interval) upward trend confirmed using the Mann-Kendall (MK) trend test. The accumulated intensity, count, duration, and days of Indian heat waves have also increased over the analyzed time period over most of the country and especially in the northern, southern, and western parts of India (Fig. 1, B to E).”
Temperatures increased substantially if we look at a National Average (mean) — the actual increase in the National Mean Summer Temperature trend is from 27.55 to 27.9, an increase of 0.35 °C ) or 0.63 °F. (Note: not the claimed 0.5 °C, which is a rounded up exaggeration) In the fifty (50) years of the data set, this gives an increase of 0.07°C/decade. This increase we will simply have to accept as valid, though we must point out that the National Average Summertime Surface Air Temperature may not be the best metric to use to judge what are obviously very localized heat wave events, according to the sub-panels B thru E, and may be skewed by UHI effects in India’s massively huge urban centers. India is huge and geographically diverse — from the tropical southern provinces to high Himalayan plateaus — making a “national” average temperature meaningless in this context.
The rest of the story is contained in these two excerpts from Figures 2, 3 and 4:
The primary feature of these two graphs is that they are long-term flat, with a couple of spikes and dips.
Look back up at the National Average Temperature graph — it shows a particularly low national temperature in 1971, which shows up the these two graphs as extremely low population-weighted and income weighted heat wave deaths. And we see the existence of two (possibly three) unusually high years, 1997 and 2003.
Here’s where the “novel” statistics takes place:
Panel C shows what we expect — The more heat wave days, the higher the average temperature.
Panel B likewise is as we would expect — longer heat waves are more likely to produce more deaths.
Panel A however, compares a probability density of Mean Summer temperature of 27°C and 27.5°C .
Look at the original temperature graph one more time, where do 27°C and 27.5°C appear:
The apparent novel statistics involves comparing the data of a low temperature year, like 1971, (very near 27°C) — not with the most recent period, not the most recent decade, not the high temp end of the graph — with 27.5°C which appears at the beginning of the time series, in 1960 and looks like the approximate average low limit for the data set.
I am, admittedly, confused by this selection of temperatures for the probability densities in Fig 4A — but it appears to have been chosen to “prove” the hypothesis of the effect of a 0.5°C rise in temperatures. Where could they have gotten death data for 27°C ? Not even a single year in the 50 year time series has national average temperatures that low. Neither the full published journal paper nor the Supplementary Materials contain any explanation for the choice of temperatures in the Figure 4 probability distributions, however the SM have results different (by several percentage points) from those in the published paper [see fig. S6. Results of a conditional probability density analysis of mortality given certain thresholds for summer maximum temperatures].
The two Deaths graphs above reveal the more scientifically correct findings of the study, which do come to light in the whole journal article, but are not highlighted in the Abstract, the Press Release, or the MSM. Quoting from the paper:
“In an effort to understand the underlying mechanisms of heat wave mortality, we further explored its relationship with population and income levels in India. Figure 3 shows that the relationship between population-weighted heat wave days and mortality rates is only slightly better than that between mortality and summer mean temperatures …; however, the correlation between income-weighted heat wave days and mortality rates is better….”
“These observations reinforce previous work that highlighted poverty as a significant factor in climate-induced mortality, such as heat wave deaths..”
The Bottom Line:
The nugget of truth: Heat waves can be killers. Heat waves tend to carry off the poor, especially the poor elderly, the poor infirm, the poor vulnerable young.
But, primarily, it is Poverty that kills. It kills the old, it kills the infirm, it kills the very young, it kills the weak.
Any stressor, be it heat waves, cold snaps, drought, political instability, inflation, armed conflict or price increases of basic food staples will cause spikes in deaths, especially among the poor — and the poor in India are very, very poor.
We really didn’t need another study to tell us that — and the use of “novel statistical methods” [stretching the truth] in an attempt to claim that “moderate increases in mean temperatures may cause great increases in heat-related mortality” does not contribute to the sum of human knowledge.
If we want to save lives, to decrease the threat of changing climatic conditions, we need to fight poverty — at the household level where real people live.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
I’d be glad to answer your questions and respond to your comments.
I am not an expert in climate science — so I don’t respond to Climate Warrior salvos from either side of the great divide.
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What ever happened to”Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”?
Love the post modern concept;
“Using a novel probabilistic model, “.
The rest of that verbage can be used as fire starter or as infill material for any other Modern, insert pseudo science title, Thesis.
“Using a novel probabilistic model” That says it all.
I am curious why 80° F is a heat wave? What is the deal? I, who am heat sensitive, was out mowing my lawn in 80° weather. Not only novel statistics, but moving WAY down the definition of heat wave. Maybe they should move it to 75° and they can get even more deaths. This is so far from science…..
I had the impression that this was the average
Sheri, a monumental problem among climate scientists, medical researchers and many others outside the core hard sciences is a lack of understanding of statistics and even a facility with mathematics. Except for economics, the social sciences are generally hopeless at this. The courses they take for stats are elementary. They are the last folks who should be experimenting with novel” statistical methods. I believe when they get a bunch of data with no obvious pattern, they truly think putting through every ‘statistucal’ process until they get an accidental trend, is what scientists do. The massive computing power put in their hands makes one think of giving a large number of typewriters to a large number of monkeys?
This is worse than we thought, right? Tell me it’s worse than we thought!!!!!
Kip Hansen combines a first-rate mind with a thorough command of facts and (rarest of all) common sense. Over the years, I have learned to pay close attention to his commentaries on and criticisms of climate “science.” We are all beneficiaries of his work.
John ==> Thank you for the compliment — I hope I can live up to it.
You’ve already earned it, Kip . . even if you don’t make it through the winter ; )
So Kip it would appear that your only issue with this paper is that it did not discuss all the other
causes of death? If I wrote a paper saying that the probability of dying in a car accident increased with
the blood alcohol level of the drivers would you still complain that poverty was the biggest cause of death?
Geronimo ==> I hope you’ll give the essay another read and see if you can’t come away with a different impression. Nothing in my essay relates to failure to account for other causes of death.
India weather is highly variable. Several localised and regional factors, both weather and non-weather factors, play major role on weather. Many a times people with little knowledge on such systems write and publish articles in international journals – unfortunately the peers themselves have little knowledge on such.
People used talk and write saying that desert is moving towards Delhi, the capital city of India [in fact this is one of the question posed to me in the interview for a post in ICRISAT in Hyderabad in 1976]. In 70s one international scientist requested IMD to provide rainfall data from desert zone to answer this question. IMD supplied the data [at that time data was not available on computers but just started to transfer data on to punched cards (I was involved)] by copying from the records as they are. The scientist using this data as it is and published an article in an international journal. My office was just by the side of IMD library, I used to go there to look in to new journals or books during lunch time. The librarian Mr. Dabir showed me the journal in which this article was published. It was shocking. Unfortunately the scientist did not has the knowledge that rainfall data was recorded in inches up to 1956 and there onwards in millimeters. This was brought to the notice of DDGC [(late) Shri K. N. Rao, who was a co-author of WMO’s Climate Change Manual in 1966] and he in turn brought the same to the notice of the scientist. He withdrew the article from the journal.
In 70s government of India planned to lay new runway in Santacruz [Mumbai] airport for creating new International terminal and for this purpose a hillock was removed [I was a trainee in Santacruz Airport for a month as part of IMD one year training]. Later I plotted the rainfall data of Santacruz and Colaba and found that Santacruz rainfall gradually come down to around 300 mm. Later this was recovered with tall international terminal building construction and several other buildings.
Indian weather varies with climate system [as defined by IPCC] and general circulation patterns. Heat and cold waves are associated with Western Disturbances, part of general circulation pattern. This flow direction and intensity is modified by several local and regional circulation patterns. On this I published an article in 1978 in IMD Journal.
Human comfort is related to three weather parameters, namely temperature, relative humidity and wind [speed and direction]. Under dry conditions high temperature rarely kill people. Even with low temperatures with high relative humidity kill people. The intensity is reduced by wind. In fact the impact is directly related to Wet Bulb Temperature. The impact [deaths] of heat wave is high in Bihar region with high Wet Bulb Temperature condition. In desert with high Dry Bulb Temperature in desert the impact [deaths] is less.
I published papers on these issues in IMD Journal in 70s.
In India droughts and floods have direct relationship with temperature. For example, during 2002 and 2009 drought years with 0.81 and 0.79% of normal rainfall, the temperature was raised by 0.7 and 0.9 oC. In the present article the figure 1960 to 2009 showed a peak in 2009. This peak is not a part of heat wave condition but it is part of drought. Deaths are associated with several factors associated with drought condition.
Though average temperature showed a raise but this raise is more associated with night time temperature [UHI].
Deaths are also associated with several other factors such as food, shelter, water, food adulteration, etc.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy ==> Always appreciate your input.
Dr. Reddy — just so I understand your one of your conclusions, I would like to rephrase it and see if you agree with it:
“In India droughts and floods have direct relationship with temperature. For example, during 2002 and 2009 drought years with 0.81 and 0.79% of normal rainfall, the temperature was raised by 0.7 and 0.9 oC. In the present article the figure 1960 to 2009 showed a peak in 2009. This peak is not a part of heat wave condition but it is part of drought. Deaths are associated with several factors associated with drought condition.”
So, you are claiming that the drought is what led to the higher temperatures, not the other way around. Is that correct? I’ve always had this idea going back to the US Great Depression. The Continental US had close to the highest temperatures in our history. The more I looked at it, it became clear that the drought led to the higher temperatures and the drought was predominantly caused by unsustainable farming as farmers tried to earn enough money during the Depression.
so, see it I got this right. The poor are poor because there are poor. and when it heats up they die, um, because they are poor. and the way out of this is for them not to be poor.
So if temps go up, the poor, the ones that remain poor, die.
got it.
Are you a “climate scientist” by any chance, ReallySkeptical?
The nugget of truth: Heat waves can be killers. Heat waves tend to carry off the poor, especially the poor elderly, the poor infirm, the poor vulnerable young.
But, primarily, it is Poverty that kills. It kills the old, it kills the infirm, it kills the very young, it kills the weak.
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This is largely an evidence free assertion. That’s worse than the novel stats they employ.
Estimating the excess deaths or early harvesting of people due to heat waves… ( and both kip and the writers screw up the definition of heat wave) requires good mortality data and weather data. ..More than temps are needed.
Partitioning all the causes or factors would require patient identifying data..
Bottom line. Heat waves kill. And climate warming will not decrease heat related early harvesting of people. Yes poverty plays a role. This why you don’t want to make the unsolvable problem of poverty harder by emitting c02 that you don’t have to. In other words those of you who are pretending to care about the poverty problem are not fooling anyone.
Mosher ==> If you think that “But, primarily, it is Poverty that kills.” is “largely an evidence free assertion.” you need to get out and spend a couple of years living in a Third World country — outside of the All-Inclusive Resort enclave, and outside of the modern capital cities.
My wife and I spent ten years doing humanitarian work in the Latin Caribbean and I have seen the evidence first hand, up close, and still have nightmares about it. I invite you to spend a few days living in a Haitian batteye in the Dominican Republic nursing a sick child whose only crime is black skin, a child that could be saved with a nickles worth of amoxicillin, if there was only a doctor willing to give it to him.
Evidence does not mean sterile numbers — real evidence happens in the real world.
The Poverty Finding is the Indian study authors….
There is plenty of evidence linking poverty to risk factors associated with death from natural disasters (including heat waves.)
“While this reality brings with it unquantifiable risks of dangerous climate change,
insisting – either implicitly or explicitly – that the poorest people on earth forego basic
economic development in order to mitigate climate change would seem to be, at the
very least, a morally dubious proposition, particularly given that energy development
generally increases societal resilience to climatic extremes and natural disasters.”
https://thebreakthrough.org/images/pdfs/Energy_for_Human_Development.pdf
and
“Consider two recent examples: a cyclone struck the Indian state of Orissa in 1999 destroying 2 million houses and killing 10,000 people and in 2004 three hurricanes hit Florida killing 116 people. The people of Orissa and Florida both suffered disasters, but there was big difference in their aftermaths. What makes people more or less vulnerable to weather disasters? …
“The Christian Tearfund charity issued a report for COP-10 noting that “98 percent of those killed and affected by natural disasters come from developing countries, underlining the link between poverty and vulnerability to disaster.” The Tearfund report added that in 2001 some 170 million people were affected by disasters. The three billion people living on less than $2 per day don’t have much to fall back on in an emergency.
“Consider the difference in the death tolls caused by a cyclone in Orissa and hurricanes in Florida. The United States has better early warning systems, more hospitals and paved roads, sturdier houses and better emergency response than does India (vulnerability score 30, average income, $2,900). All these things are made possible because Americans are wealthier than Indians: U.S. per capita annual GDP is $37,800.”
http://reason.com/archives/2004/12/14/adapting-to-climate-change
Specifically, heat wave deaths in India have been tied to poverty:
“Counties in the highest quartile of median household income had the lowest rates of death due to any of the weather-related causes (Table 3). The age-adjusted heat-related and cold-related death rates for counties in the lowest median household income quartile were about 2 times as high as those for counties in the highest quartile.” With heat waves, death rates in the lowest income quartile were 3.2 per 1,000 compared to the highest of 1.8 — cold weather deaths were ~ twice as high as warm weather deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf “
This is part of the climate wars.
The Indian government want reliable despatchable coal fired power stations for its population and is building them.
There is a crackdown on black money, a GST is being implemented across India, effectively unifying the currency and stabilising the tax system.
Digital economy and internet is fast progressing.
The monopolistic coal miners are being broken up
http://www.businesstoday.in/current/corporate/narendra-modi-govt-proposes-break-up-of-coal-india/story/241567.html
‘Around 70 percent of power generation is coal based. The country is the world’s third-largest producer and its third-biggest importer of coal, which the government wants to change by boosting local coal production.
In a presentation seen by Reuters, government officials recommend that Coal India – with a stock market valuation of $28 billion – should be broken up into seven companies, which they say would make it more competitive and efficient.’
‘The government wants Coal India to increase production of coal to 1 billion tonnes a year by 2020 from around 539 million tonnes in the fiscal year that ended in March. It wants India as a whole to produce 1.5 billion tonnes a year by 2020.’
‘Under Modi, Coal India’s production growth rate has nearly doubled, marking one of the administration’s biggest successes. Fuel shortages for power plants have turned into oversupply.’
Looks like they will be adapting to any climate change.
As shown above India is a multiple chimera of climate zones.
They are actually studying these with their own scientists and space technology.
In the meanwhile little Australia is closing despatchable power without replacement and the bankers and monopolies have taken over energy supply.
We look forward to political promises and scarce, costly, electricity.
lawispbuckingham — All the statements are inaccurate. On some of those items my open letter to Prime Minister of India in wide circulation in media. They are helping rich businessmen and industrialists at the cost of around 85% of Indians. About the thermal power as per 2011 information:
Type India USA
RES 11% around 3.8%
Nuclear 02% 21.5%
Hydropower 21% 06.0%
Diesel 01% —
Gas 10% 19.8%
Coal 55% 48.9%
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
If we are talking ‘stressors’, India suffered a severe drought in 2016 and is facing a continued water crisis into 2017:
http://www.firstpost.com/india/south-indias-drought-part-1-five-states-face-a-severe-water-crisis-made-worse-by-the-onset-of-summer-3394636.html
Griff ==> India and its people are at the mercy of the monsoons. The come late or miserly they are in trouble, when they come, sometimes they come too much and there is flooding. Always it is the poor that suffer the most.
Look up the coriolis effect and learn something.
Droughts, monsoons, and heat waves in India have been linked to land use and land cover changes (and, of course, ocean oscillations.) Note how this does not “contradict” your citation, as yours never actually tries to show the reason for the increase is due to Global Warming or Climate Change. (I also note that the statistics in the paper seem pretty weak.)
“… it is demonstrated that part of the changes in moderate rainfall events and temperature have been caused by land-use/land-cover change (LULCC), which is mostly anthropogenic. Model simulations show that the increase in seasonal mean and extreme temperature over central India coincides with the region of decrease in forest and increase in crop cover. Our results also show that LULCC alone causes warming in the extremes of daily mean and maximum temperatures by a maximum of 1–1.2 °C, which is comparable with the observed increasing trend in the extremes. Decrease in forest cover and simultaneous increase in crops not only reduces the evapotranspiration over land and large-scale convective instability, but also contributes toward decrease in moisture convergence through reduced surface roughness.
…
“Results from these additional experiments corroborate our initial findings and confirm the contribution of LULCC in the decrease in moderate rainfall events and increase in daily mean and extreme temperature over India. Therefore, this study demonstrates the important implications of LULCC over India during the monsoon season.”
http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/1765/2016/
I’d also note that your citation does not really discuss the “water crisis” as such crises are most often linked to population.
I did miss that your citation also suggests that the precipitation changes (and heating) are due to evapotranspiration, which is more related to LULLC:
“Figure 4(a) shows vertical velocity at 500 hPa, which clearly suggests sinking motion (with positive values) over the northern parts of the country. These atmospheric conditions are also associated with depleted soil moisture (as shown in Fig. 4b) and reduced precipitable water content over northern parts of the country (Fig. 4c). … Previous studies showed that soil moisture/temperature interactions increase summer temperature variability, resulting in extreme temperatures when soil moisture is low.” (i.e. low soil moisture leads to high temperatures and reduced precipitation just as reported by Halder, et al.)
The paper also points out a significant link between ocean oscillations and these heat waves:
“The first SST spatial mode shows large loading over the tropical Indian Ocean, suggesting a major influence of the tropical Indian Ocean on the variability of heat waves.” and “The spatial pattern of the second mode of SST shows more loading from the tropical Pacific region, which suggests the ENSO phenomenon is also a major factor influencing heat wave events over the Indian sub-continent. The time series of frequency, duration and maximum duration (Fig. 3) clearly suggests a link between the El Nino events and heat wave events over India. … ”
Outside of those, the trends are pretty weak and assume that ENSO events will increase over time. In other words, it’s not really any change from what we know.
Maybe worth noting that Indian began introducing Automatic Weather Stations from 1984/85. There is evidence that AWS exaggerate extremes in max.
http://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/04/india-slums-children
A good read. Heat waves are hardly an issue in India despite being common.
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/india/mortality-rate
Mortality rate for under 5 dropped from 248 per 1000 in 1960 to 48 in 2015. For adults, around 500 down to about 200 for men and even lower for women.
About 90% of deaths are put down to disease. Authorities estimated 2500 deaths in the 2015 summer due to the heat. That is 0.002 per 1000 and possibly much less for healthy individuals.
Priorities, people.
Oops cock up. Mortality rate for adults is dying before 60 rather than per year.
There are 7.3 deaths per 1000 people in 2016.
So – what about this 2016 study??
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep26153
“Over India, heat waves occur during the summer months of April to June. A gridded daily temperature data set for the period, 1961–2013 has been analyzed to examine the variability and trends in heat waves over India. For identifying heat waves, the Excess Heat Factor (EHF) and 90th percentile of maximum temperatures were used. Over central and northwestern parts of the country, frequency, total duration and maximum duration of heat waves are increasing. Anomalous persistent high with anti-cyclonic flow, supplemented with clear skies and depleted soil moisture are primarily responsible for the occurrence of heat waves over India.”
Griff ==> Very interesting conclusion:
Not slowly (barely) increasing national-average surface air temperatures or national-average summer mean temperatures, claimed by the study which is the subject of this essay.