A Comparative Analysis of the Temperature-Mortality Risks Using Different Weather Datasets Across Heterogeneous...

Area of Science:

• Environmental epidemiology
• Climate science
• Public health

Background:

• Gridded climate datasets (GCDs) are emerging as potential replacements for weather station data in health impact assessments related to temperature and climate change.
• GCDs are particularly valuable for understudied regions lacking sufficient or high-quality weather station data.
• Previous research has not critically assessed GCDs of varying spatial resolutions for temperature-mortality studies across diverse geographical and climatic areas.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the performance of different gridded climate datasets (GCDs) against weather station data in temperature-mortality assessments.
• To compare GCDs of varying spatial resolutions, including global and local datasets, in the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
• To determine the suitability of GCDs for assessing climate change impacts on health in regions with complex geography and climate variability.

Main Methods:

• Utilized population-weighted daily mean temperature data from ERA5 (global), HadUK-grid, and MeteoSwiss-grid (local) datasets.
• Compared GCDs with local weather station data and unweighted temperature series in the UK and Switzerland.
• Employed quasi-Poisson time series regression with distributed lag nonlinear models to analyze temperature-mortality associations and excess mortality.

Main Results:

• Despite variations in average temperature estimates across the five exposure datasets, substantial differences in temperature-mortality associations or impacts were not observed.
• Local population-weighted GCDs demonstrated superior performance compared to global datasets and unweighted series.
• The findings indicate that GCDs can reliably estimate temperature-mortality relationships across diverse regions.

Conclusions:

• Local population-weighted gridded climate datasets are effective alternatives to traditional weather station data for epidemiological studies.
• GCDs can advance research on climate change health impacts, especially in data-scarce or geographically complex regions.
• This study supports the use of GCDs for robust climate change and health assessments globally.