Search Results (78)

This study analyzes biometeorological conditions during summer heat events in 11 cities located in different regions of Poland in the summer months from 2020 to 2024. Heat days (defined as days with a maximum temperature exceeding 30 °C) and heatwaves (defined as at least three consecutive days with a maximum temperature above 30 °C) were identified. Biometeorological conditions were assessed based on the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) and heart rate (HR), assuming a metabolic heat production of 135 W∙m⁻² for an adult human. The indices were calculated using the BioKlima 2.6 software. The findings reveal that all cities experienced significant thermal stress during heat events. The maximum UTCI values during heat days indicated strong and very strong heat stress. During the most intense heatwaves, assessed using the Heat Wave Severity (HWS) index, these categories of heat stress occurred 20–30% of the time. Simultaneously, the mean daily heart rates exceeded the warning threshold of 90 beats per minute. Differences in biometeorological conditions were found between urban centers and places located outside the center, where strong heat conditions occurred less frequently. The results indicate that biometeorological conditions imposing thermal stress on the human body were present in all Polish cities during the analyzed five-year period. In Warszawa, Wrocław, and Rzeszów, heatwaves and heat stress occurred annually. Full article

This study examined the factors influencing wild boar population density in Slovakia from 2013 to 2023, focusing on biometeorological, demographic, and ecological variables. Linear regression models were used to analyze spring population figures and the number of hunted animals across eight self-governing regions. Following the African swine fever outbreak in 2019, population dynamics changed significantly. The number of wild boars hunted increased while population densities decreased, particularly in the Presov, Kosice, and Banska Bystrica regions. Biometeorological factors, including monthly air temperature and precipitation, significantly influenced wild boar density at the national level, with soil temperature at a 5 cm depth playing a key role regionally. Demographic factors, such as road network and human population densities, also impacted wild boar populations, with road network density being the most important. Ecological factors, including the presence of brown hares, common pheasants, and grey wolves, had varying effects across regions. Grey wolf predation and interspecies competition were particularly significant in mountainous, less urbanized areas. The joint influence of biometeorological and demographic factors was higher in regions affected by African swine fever. This study highlights the complex interactions between environmental, demographic, and ecological factors and provides insights into more effective wildlife management strategies aimed at the sustainable management of wild boar populations. It advocates for a regionally tailored, integrated approach that considers the influence of biometeorological, demographic, and ecological factors, while also addressing the risks associated with epidemics, such as African swine fever. Full article

Smart cities are widely regarded as a promising solution to urbanization challenges; however, environmental aspects such as outdoor thermal comfort and urban heat island are often less addressed than social and economic dimensions of sustainability. To address this gap, we developed and evaluated an affordable, scalable, and cost-effective weather station platform, consisting of a centralized server and portable edge devices to facilitate urban heat island and outdoor thermal comfort studies. This edge device is designed in accordance with the ISO 7726 (1998) standards and further enhanced with a positioning system. The device can regularly log parameters such as air temperature, relative humidity, globe temperature, wind speed, and geographical coordinates. Strategic selection of components allowed for a low-cost device that can perform data manipulation, pre-processing, store the data, and exchange data with a centralized server via the internet. The centralized server facilitates scalability, processing, storage, and live monitoring of data acquisition processes. The edge devices’ electrical and shielding design was evaluated against a commercial weather station, showing Mean Absolute Error and Root Mean Square Error values of 0.1 and 0.33, respectively, for air temperature. Further, empirical test campaigns were conducted under two scenarios: “stop-and-go” and “on-the-move”. These tests provided an insight into transition and response times required for urban heat island and thermal comfort studies, and evaluated the platform’s overall performance, validating it for nuanced human-scale thermal comfort, urban heat island, and bio-meteorological studies. Full article

The study of the effects of climate change and air pollution on human health is an interesting topic for wellbeing projects in urban areas. We present a method for highlighting how adverse weather and environmental conditions affect human health and influence emergency room admissions during the summer in an urban area. Daily apparent temperature, a biometeorological index, was used to characterize thermal discomfort while atmospheric concentrations of PM10 and NOX were used as indicators of unfavorable environmental conditions. We analyzed how the above parameters influence the emergency room access, considering all the different pathologies. Over the four years analyzed, we identified the periods during which environmental conditions (both thermal discomfort and pollutant concentrations) were unfavorable, the persistence of these conditions, and verified that during these days, the average daily number of emergency room visits increased. Visits for ENT and dermatological disorders also showed significant increases. Our analysis showed that emergency room access is useful in evaluating the impact of unfavorable climatic and environmental conditions on human health during the summer period; vice versa, our results could be used to optimize resource management in emergency rooms during this specific period of the year. Full article

Given the persistently high incidence of skin cancer, there is a need for prevention-focused information on the impact of long-term changes in ambient solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) on human personal radiation exposure. The exposure categories of the UV Index linked to protection recommendations show long-term shifts in the frequency of occurrence with regional differences in direction and magnitude. The patterns of change for sites in the humid continental climate differ from those for sites in other climate zones such as the humid temperate or Mediterranean climate. The diversity of the individual exposures of indoor and outdoor workers can be described using probability models for personal erythema-effective UVR dose (UVD). For people who work indoors, the largest share of the total individual annual UVD is due to vacation, whereas for people who work outdoors, it is occupational exposure. The change in ambient UVDs at the residential locations is only partially reflected in the individual UVDs. For eight selected European sites between 38° and 60° northern latitude, the median of the individual annual total UVD (excluding travel) during the period 2009–2019 is 0.2 to 2.0% higher for indoor workers and 0.6 to 3.2% higher for outdoor workers compared to the period 1983–2008. Changes in the choice of an exemplary holiday destination offer both indoor and outdoor workers the potential to compensate for the observed long-term trend at their place of residence and work. Full article

This study concerns the application of statistical learning (SL) in thermal stress assessment compared to the results accomplished by an international expert group when developing the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). The performance of diverse SL algorithms in predicting UTCI equivalent temperatures and in thermal stress assessment was assessed by root mean squared errors (RMSE) and Cohen’s kappa. A total of 48 predictors formed by 12 variables at four consecutive 30 min intervals were obtained as the output of an advanced human thermoregulation model, calculated for 105,642 conditions from extreme cold to extreme heat. Random forests and k-nearest neighbors closely predicted UTCI equivalent temperatures with an RMSE about 3 °C. However, clustering applied after dimension reduction (principal component analysis and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding) was inadequate for thermal stress assessment, showing low to fair agreement with the UTCI stress categories (Cohen’s kappa < 0.4). The findings of this study will inform the purposeful application of SL in thermal stress assessment, where they will support the biometeorological expert. Full article

Citizens in urban areas are affected by the urban heat island (UHI) effect, resulting in increased thermal heat compared to rural areas. This threat is exacerbated by global climate change. Therefore, it is necessary to assess human thermal comfort and risk for decision making. This is important for planners (climate resilience), the health sector (information for vulnerable people), tourism, urban designers (aesthetics), and building architects. Urban structures modify local meteorological parameters and thus human thermal comfort at the microscale. Knowledge of the pattern of a city’s UHI is typically limited. Based on previous research, generalized additive models (GAMs) were built to predict the spatial pattern of the UHI in the city of Karlsruhe. The models were trained with administrative, remotely sensed, and land use and land cover geodata, and validated with measurements in Freiburg. This identified the hot and cold spots and the need for further urban planning in the city. The model had some limitations regarding water bodies and anthropogenic heat production, but it was well suited for applications in mid-latitude cities which are not topographically characterized. The model can potentially be used for other cities (e.g., in heat health action plans) as the training data are freely available. Full article

The objective of this article is to discuss the main studies related to urban heat in the city of Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco in Brazil, and contribute to providing theoretical and methodological perspectives for future research and the understanding of the history of these studies. Recife is the core of the largest metropolitan region in the northeastern region of Brazil, characterized by a complex urban landscape marked by inequalities and socio-spatial challenges. Moreover, it is recognized as one of the most vulnerable cities to climate change in the world. Analyzing urban heat in Recife through a descriptive review has the potential to provide a comprehensive analysis of the interactions between physical, social, and environmental elements with urban heat in this city, as well as to identify shortcomings and trends in ongoing initiatives and future perspectives. The discussions encompass the following themes: (a) urban heat scales, ranging from macro to global, in both temporal and spatial aspects; (b) the regional and local contexts of urban growth in Recife; (c) the challenges in urban heat studies in the city, including difficulties in data acquisition and integration of approaches; and (d) current efforts and future perspectives in addressing urban heat in this city. The main challenges for future heat studies include developing means for applicability in urban planning, enhancing observations of the interaction with the urban landscape, overcoming the lack of data sources, and understanding the interaction between scales to develop approaches that integrate the social and physical dimensions of urban climate and its relationship with climate change. Such reflections can also be extended to other geographic areas that share similar patterns of urban growth and socio-spatial complexities, helping to enhance the representation of the Global South in this field. Full article

The necessity of exploring the relationship between sleep quality and the thermal environment has amplified regarding increasing heat stress risk on the human body due to climate change, particularly in vulnerable uninsulated buildings in Ankara. Within this scope, this study investigated occupants’ sleep quality and human thermal comfort in insulated and uninsulated buildings under three local extreme heat event thresholds: (1) typical summer days (TSD₂₅), (2) very hot days (VHD₃₃), and lastly, (3) heat wave events (HWE₃₁). Within a two-tiered approach to thermal comfort evaluations, the human thermal comfort of occupants was identified through the calculation of physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) from the climatic data of local meteorological stations. The psychological thermal comfort and sleep quality of participants were evaluated by questionnaires during each heat event. The results of this study demonstrated that the physiological thermal load of the participants was highest during VHD₃₃s, given that both outdoor and indoor PET values presented their highest values within VHD₃₃ events. Furthermore, the outdoor PET values reached extreme heat stress based on physiological stress grades with 43.5 °C, which indicated the exacerbated vulnerability of Ankara during extreme heat events. The PET values were consistently higher in uninsulated buildings than in insulated buildings. Also, most of the mean psychological thermal comfort votes and sleep quality votes were better in uninsulated buildings than in insulated ones during TSD₂₅s and HWE₃₁s, while it was the opposite within extreme conditions of VHD₃₃s. The outputs of this study contribute to interdisciplinary efforts to attenuate the existing and impending risks of climate change on human life by defining the influence of increasing outdoor heat stress on indoor spaces, thermal comfort, and the sleep quality of occupants. Full article

In recent years, a considerable body of research has demonstrated the suitability of global and regional reanalysis data for human-biometeorological applications. These applications include the assessment of the outdoor thermal environment and the investigation of its relation to human health, especially in areas where the spatial coverage of surface observational networks is sparse. Here, we present the first comprehensive evaluation of the most recent pan-European regional reanalysis, namely the Copernicus European Regional Reanalysis (CERRA) dataset at 5.5 km spatial resolution, in terms of simulating the observed human bioclimate, as expressed by the modified physiologically equivalent temperature (mPET) that is computed through the RayMan Pro model, and its meteorological drivers. The validation was performed over Greece using up to 11 years of records of 2 m air temperature and relative humidity, 10 m wind speed and global solar radiation derived from 35 sites of the nationwide network of surface weather stations operated by the METEO Unit at the National Observatory of Athens. The ERA5-Land dataset at ~9 km spatial resolution, which represents the current state-of-the-art reanalysis, was also compared against the same observations. Our findings show that the CERRA dataset performs significantly better compared to the ERA5-Land reanalysis with respect to the replication of the examined meteorological variables and mPET. The added value of the CERRA data is particularly evident during the warm period of the year and in regions that are characterized by complex topography and/or proximity to the coastline. Combining the CERRA dataset with population and mortality data, we further showcase its applicability for human-biometeorological and heat–health studies at a local scale, using the regional unit of Rethymno (Crete) as a pilot area for the analysis. Full article

Europe has been experiencing an increasing number of sweltering heat waves in recent years. This run of hot extremes induces a significant impact on the human environment, especially in terms of excess mortality, highlighting the urgent need for improved heat–health action planning. This is particularly true in countries situated in the eastern Mediterranean, which is considered a climate change hot spot. To increase preparedness and response to overheating risks, heat–health warning systems (HHWSs) are of vital importance. In this direction, the principal aim of the HEAT-ALARM research project is to provide a novel scientific and technological framework for the development of efficient HHWSs, employing Greece as a testbed. Going beyond the simple notion that outdoor meteorological conditions alone can adequately describe the heat–health nexus, a sophisticated human-biometeorological index, the modified physiologically equivalent temperature (mPET), is used. Advanced statistical models and tools are employed in order to establish a clear link between mPET and excess mortality at regional-unit administrative level. Moreover, urban climate factors produced by combining remote sensing and geographical information system techniques are incorporated into the HHWS via a state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction model. The latter includes a scheme that combines the parameterization and modeling of building effects and energy, respectively, in order to account for the urban indoor thermal conditions and the intra-urban differential heat exposure within the five highest populated cities of Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Heraklion and Larissa). Further, the human body’s acclimatization ability is considered, as well as the physiological characteristics of different vulnerable groups of people, including the elderly, women and outdoor workers. The current paper describes the scientific background of HEAT-ALARM and provides preliminary results associated with the project’s realization. Full article

We present climatology and trends of the UTCI obtained from the ERA5 reanalysis between 1941 and 2018 for the Czech Republic. Long-term average of the UTCI exposes regions with approximately similar stress levels given by weather on humans, and it also forms the basis for the first bioclimatological mapping of the Czech Republic. Furthermore, positive long-term trends of UTCI indicate gradually increasing thermal stress on humans in all seasons but winter, in which, on the contrary, the cold stress decreases. Nevertheless, inhomogeneities in our results are expected because of flattened orography due to the coarse resolution of ERA5. Full article

The aim of this study is to evaluate and compare the human-biometeorological conditions at two resorts in Ukraine: a coastal resort located at Odesa in southern Ukraine and an inland resort situated by the lake at Svityaz situated in northwest Ukraine. The results of this study can facilitate the assessment of the tourist potentials of both locations by the tourism industry, tour operators, and tourists. The evaluation is based on an analysis of the Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) and parameters presented through the Climate–Tourism/Transfer–Information Scheme (CTIS) for the period 1991–2020. The CTIS data reveal that better conditions in terms of thermal comfort can be found during the warm period from May to September at both sites. The results show that the highest frequency of all grades of heat stress are observed in the last 10-day period of July and in the first 10-day period of August at both stations, but at Odesa, the frequency of heat stress of any grade is approximately 10% higher than at Svityaz. The frequency of moderate, strong and extreme heat stress during the daytime in July and in the first two 10-day periods of August at Odesa ranged from 51.3% to 66.5%, and at Svityaz it ranged between 40.2 and 54.6%. Human-biometeorological conditions during heat waves are more strenuous at Odesa. The frequency of days with extreme heat stress at 12 UTC during summer heat waves is 48.4% at Odesa and 35.6% at Svityaz. The results show a higher frequency of thermal stress at Odesa, which makes this resort less comfortable for people vulnerable to heat stress. Full article

In order to assess whether there is an increasing need for adaptation to the associated human health risks, the long-term occurrence (1983–2019) of low-ozone events (LOEs) with associated near-surface anomalies of erythema-effective UV irradiance was examined using an impact-related approach. Based on satellite data, means of four locations in Germany (Sylt, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich) were compared for three subperiods (T1: 1983–1989, T2: 1990–1997, T3: 1998–2019). The period of peak global ozone depletion in the 1990s (T2) is characterized by a larger frequency of LOEs than the preceding (T1) and the subsequent (T3) subperiods. During the most recent subperiod (T3), the mean number of LOEs is 1.1 ± 0.5 events/year, with a variability of 0 to 4.2 ± 0.8 events/year, and shows a statistically significant decrease in the annual number of −4.8%/year. The annual totals of the LOE-associated anomalies of the erythema-effective UV radiation dose show no trend during T3. With regard to LOE-associated UV index anomalies, spring is the season most affected by LOEs, with more than half of all cumulative UV peak loads, while the absolute maximum values of the LOE-associated UV index anomaly of about 1.8 UV index occur near the summer solstice. Within the most recent subperiod (T3), summer contributes an increasing share of the peak loads. Overall, the study confirms that LOEs pose health risks due to intermittent, pronounced positive anomalies in erythema-effective UV irradiance and therefore require special attention and adaptation measures. Long-term changes can be identified, but to date there has been no evidence of an increasing health risk in Germany. Full article

This study aimed to analyze meteorological variables versus hospital admissions for respiratory diseases for the age groups of children under five and the elderly (over 65 years of age) in different climate regions of Brazil, for the years 2018 and 2020, i.e., before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the study was, on one hand, to evaluate the influence of weather variables on respiratory disease in humans, and on the other hand, take into account two years with differing dynamics due to a worldwide pandemic that significantly changed people’s lifestyles. The human biometeorological index (Universal Thermal Climate Index, UTCI) was used as representative of the integral association of meteorological variables. UTCI data were obtained from the ERA5-HEAT reanalysis database, which provides hourly grid data with a spatial resolution of 0.25° × 0.25°. The Brazilian cities Manaus, Brasilia and Porto Alegre, which represent different climatic contexts in the country, were used in the analysis. The method compared temperature and climate reanalysis data to hospital admission data for respiratory diseases, obtained from the Brazilian Unified Health System database (DATASUS), according to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Edition (ICD-10). Correlation analysis was performed between variables (hospital admissions versus climate-related data) in order to identify associations between them, also accounting for different time-lag effects. We analyzed seasonal influences on the obtained correlations, correlation strength and direct or inverse relationships. Results showed that the pandemic interfered in the association between morbidity due to respiratory illnesses and climate-related variables. Full article