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Climate change and future temperature-related mortality in 15 Canadian cities

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Abstract

The environmental changes caused by climate change represent a significant challenge to human societies. One part of this challenge will be greater heat-related mortality. Populations in the northern hemisphere will experience temperature increases exceeding the global average, but whether this will increase or decrease total temperature-related mortality burdens is debated. Here, we use distributed lag modeling to characterize temperature-mortality relationships in 15 Canadian cities. Further, we examine historical trends in temperature variation across Canada. We then develop city-specific general linear models to estimate change in high- and low-temperature-related mortality using dynamically downscaled climate projections for four future periods centred on 2040, 2060 and 2080. We find that the minimum mortality temperature is frequently located at approximately the 75th percentile of the city’s temperature distribution, and that Canadians currently experience greater and longer lasting risk from cold-related than heat-related mortality. Additionally, we find no evidence that temperature variation is increasing in Canada. However, the projected increased temperatures are sufficient to change the relative levels of heat- and cold-related mortality in some cities. While most temperature-related mortality will continue to be cold-related, our models predict that higher temperatures will increase the burden of annual temperature-related mortality in Hamilton, London, Montreal and Regina, but result in slight to moderate decreases in the burden of mortality in the other 11 cities investigated.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Richard Fortin from Statistics Canada for his kind help interpreting census data, Lucie Vincent for providing homogenized temperature series data, reviewers at Health Canada, and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions for improving the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Population Studies Division, Environmental Health Science and Research Bureau, HECSB, Health Canada, 50 Columbine Drive, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Sara Lauretta Martin, Sabit Cakmak, Christopher Alan Hebbern & Neil Tremblay

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa, Marion Hall, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Mary-Luyza Avramescu

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  1. Sara Lauretta Martin
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  2. Sabit Cakmak
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  3. Christopher Alan Hebbern
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  4. Mary-Luyza Avramescu
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Correspondence to Sabit Cakmak.

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Supplementary Fig. 1

Distributed lag models of temperature-mortality relationships for the six cities not displayed in Fig. 1. The surfaces presented show relative risk (z-axis) across temperature (x-axis) and lag to 35 days (y-axis). As a result, the figures can be interpreted by imagining a slice parallel to either the temperature or lag axis. The relationship at lag 0 is represented at the edge of the temperature-mortality surface at the temperature axis. Relative risk estimates represent the risk of mortality at a specific temperature and lag, which is set to one (PDF 469 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Maximum and minimum cumulative relative risk for temperatures corresponding to the 1st, 10th, 90th and 99th percentile of the city’s temperature distribution (DOC 26 kb)

Supplementary Table 2

Correlation between standard deviation of five year periods and time for average yearly, maximum summer and minimum temperature. Results in bold typeface are significant at p = 0.05. (DOC 30 kb)

Supplementary Table 3

Average yearly mortality rates per 100,000 for odd years 1981-2000 and mortality predicted for odd years using hot and cold-temperature general linear models constructed with even-year data (DOC 26 kb)

Supplementary Table 4

Results of changing model parameters for cold-related mortality (DOC 26 kb)

Supplementary Table 5

Results of changing model parameters for heat-related mortality models (DOC 25 kb)

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Martin, S.L., Cakmak, S., Hebbern, C.A. et al. Climate change and future temperature-related mortality in 15 Canadian cities. Int J Biometeorol 56, 605–619 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-011-0449-y

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