title: Impacts of Temperature and its Variability on Mortality in New England.
abstract: Rapid buildup of greenhouse gases is expected to increase the Earth surface mean temperature, with unclear effects on temperature variability1-3. This adds urgency to better understand the direct effects of the changing climate on human health. However, the effects of prolonged exposures to temperatures, which are important for understanding the public health burden, are unclear. Here we demonstrate that long-term survival was significantly associated with both seasonal mean values and standard deviations (SDs) of temperature among the Medicare population (aged 65+) in New England, and break that down into long-term contrasts between ZIP codes and annual anomalies. A rise in summer mean temperature of 1 °C was associated with 1.0% higher death rate whereas an increase in winter mean temperature corresponded to 0.6% lower mortality. Increases in temperature SDs for both summer and winter were harmful. The increased mortality in warmer summers was entirely due to anomalies, while it was long term average differences in summer SD across ZIP codes that drove the increased risk. For future climate scenarios, seasonal mean temperatures may in part account for the public health burden, but excess public health risk of climate change may also stem from changes of within season temperature variability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Liuhua
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, PO Box 653, Israel.
authors.forename: Itai
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kloog
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zanobetti
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Pengfei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115, USA ; Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Joel D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Schwartz