Mortality Related to Air Temperature in European Cities, Based on Threshold Regression Models

There is a wealth of scientific literature that scrutinizes the relationship between mortality and temperature. The aim of this paper is to identify the nexus between temperature and three different causes of mortality (i.e., cardiological, respiratory, and cardiorespiratory) for three countries (Scotland, Spain, and Greece) and eleven cities (i.e., Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Attica, and Thessaloniki), emphasizing the differences among these cities and comparing them to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship. To quantify the association between temperature and mortality, temperature thresholds are defined for each city using a robust statistical analysis, namely threshold regression analysis. In a more detailed perspective, the threshold used is called Minimum Mortality Temperature (MMT), the temperature above or below which mortality is at minimum risk. Afterward, these thresholds are compared based on the geographical coordinates of each city. Our findings show that concerning all-causes of mortality under examination, the cities with higher latitude have lower temperature thresholds compared to the cities with lower latitude. The inclusion of the relationship between mortality and temperature in the array of upcoming climate change implications is critical since future climatic scenarios show an overall increase in the ambient temperature.