Climate change impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016

Climate change impacts on society
Figure 5.6
Overall cumulative exposure–response associations in four European cities
Relative risk
London
United Kingdom
Relative risk
Stockholm
Sweden
2.5
2.5
2.0
2.0
1.5
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
Number
1.0
of deaths
400
300
0.5
200
100
0
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
–15 –10 –5 0 5 10 15 20 25
Temperature ( º C) Temperature ( º C)
Number
of deaths
400
300
200
100
0
Relative risk
Rome
Italy
Relative risk
Madrid
Spain
2.5
2.5
2.0
2.0
1.5
1.5
1.0
Number
of deaths
600
1.0
Number
of deaths
600
0.5
400
0.5
400
200
200
0
0
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Temperature ( º C) Temperature ( º C)
0
Note:
Source:
This figure shows exposure–response associations as best linear unbiased predictions (with the 95 % empirical confidence interval
shaded grey) in representative cities of four countries, with related distributions of temperature and number of deaths. Solid vertical
lines show the minimum mortality temperatures and dashed vertical lines show the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles.
Adapted from Gasparrini et al., 2015. © Gasparrini et al. Open Access article distributed under the terms of CC BY.
165 000 deaths per year by the 2080s compared
with the present baseline, with the highest impacts
in southern Europe. The results vary across climate
models and emissions scenarios, with high emissions
scenarios leading to much higher heat-related mortality
than low emissions scenarios. Heat-related mortality
would be significantly lower under full acclimatisation
if, for example, currently cool regions were able to
achieve the temperature–mortality relationship of
currently warm regions (Ciscar et al., 2011; Huang et al.,
2011). The results from the PESETA II study confirm,
to a large extent, the results of earlier assessments
(in particular, those from the PESETA and ClimateCost
projects), although with slightly higher impacts (both
in physical and economic terms) (Ciscar et al., 2014).
Comparable estimates were made by the WHO for the
WHO European Region (Hales et al., 2014; Honda et al.,
2014).
Another study estimates that climate change
will lead to an increase in hospital admissions
owing to heat‐related respiratory diseases from
11 000 admissions (0.18 %) in the period 1981–2010
to 26 000 (0.4 %) in 2021–2050. The total number of
hospital admissions and the increase as a result of
climate change are largest in southern Europe, with the
Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016 | An indicator-based report
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