Modeling the Health Risks of Climate Change Workshop Summary (2015) / Chapter Skim
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3 MODELING HEALTH RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: STATUS, HURDLES, AND OPPORTUNITIES
3 MODELING HEALTH RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: STATUS, HURDLES, AND OPPORTUNITIES
Pages 11-20
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From page 11... ...
What does it take to model the health risks posed by climate change? Workshop speakers outlined the basic mechanics of and key considerations for developing useful models.
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Long-term simulations inevitably have lower spatial resolution than many climate-change scientists desire, he said. How model outputs are interpreted also depends on their scale, Mary Hayden, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
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Studies on the effects of climate change rarely extend beyond physical and biologic effects to human health or economic consequences. MODELING: THE STATE OF THE SCIENCE Scientists studying health effects of climate change are endeavoring to generate data that link environmental changes to health outcomes and then to incorporate the data into models of health risks posed by climate change.
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However, he hypothesized that climate change will be especially important in developing countries because of their relative inability to control the spread of vectorborne diseases. Most modeling efforts related to climate change and vectorborne disease focus on estimating future occurrence or abundance of disease vectors; this requires knowledge about various factors involved in vectorborne-disease cycles, including vector biology, reservoir host dynamics, host infection and transmission dynamics, and land-use dynamics, Ogden said.
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Kovats explained that for all health categories except mortality due to coastal flooding, the models assumed general improvement in population health due to improvements in economic development. For flooding, the models assumed increased population vulnerability due to rapid urban development in coastal areas.
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Figure 3-1 Waterborne 1 e-Disease Path hways, Freshw water–Marine Continuum e Julie Trtanj used this illustration to sho the many fa ow actors in the p pathway that li inks climate ch hange to waterborn diseases and water-related illnesses. Suc climate driv as increas ne d ch vers sing ocean temmperatures, oc cean currents, and sea-level in a nteract with ex xposure to conntaminants fro urban and rural environm om ments or wildliife.
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The rainfall output of the regional precipitation model was then used as an input for an "infrastructure model" of "how much water is going to be coming through the pipes." The bottom line is that the model predicted that sewage overflows will increase by 20%, Trtanj said. Trtanj and Jan Semenza, of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, also described models for investigating climate-change effects on water temperature in relation to the potential for outbreaks of Vibrio species, bacteria that occur naturally in coastal waters.
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The risk maps produced from the model outputs help researchers to understand differential vulnerability. "We have learned that an increase in heat-stress nights will increase mortality and that extreme heat disproportionately affects the elderly, those who are socially isolated, those of low income, blacks, and people who use public transportation." The model also is able to look at each census block and determine what demographic factors contribute to risk at that level.
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Brown, who was involved in the US Global Change Research Program's recent National Climate Assessment, pointed out that many agricultural models do not include pests and disease and therefore could be optimistic in their projections of agricultural output in 2050 and 2100. "Such secondary effects may be enormous, especially in light of the acceleration of organism changes that we are trying to prevent with genetic engineering." No surveillance system attempts to link effects of climatic events to real outcomes, Semenza said.
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Scientists' increasing use of geographic information systems and information from remote sensing allows modelers to incorporate potentially useful data from such sources as weather stations, habitat maps, and digital elevation models, Ogden said. New datasets on human mobility are also helping climate modelers.
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