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Temperature and Humidity Effects on Hospital Morbidity in Darwin, Australia
James Goldie1, Steven C Sherwood1, Donna Green1
1ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Background:
Many studies have explored the relationship between temperature and health in the context of a changing climate, but few have considered the effects of humidity, particularly in tropical locations, on human health and well-being. To investigate this potential relationship, this study assessed the main and interacting effects of daily temperature and humidity on hospital admission rates for selected heat-relevant diagnoses in Darwin, Australia.
Methods:
Univariate and bivariate Poisson generalized linear models were used to find statistically significant predictors and the admission rates within bins of predictors were compared to explore nonlinear effects.
Findings:
The analysis indicated that nighttime humidity was the most statistically significant predictor (P < 0.001), followed by daytime temperature and average daily humidity (P < 0.05). There was no evidence of a significant interaction between them or other predictors. The nighttime humidity effect appeared to be strongly nonlinear: Hot days appeared to have higher admission rates when they were preceded by high nighttime humidity.
Conclusions:
From this analysis, we suggest that heat-health policies in tropical regions similar to Darwin need to accommodate the effects of temperature and humidity at different times of day.
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