Projection of temperature-related severe injuries under climate change: a nationwide study of South Korea

Future warming is projected to increase the burden of severe injuries, which can cause deaths or chronic disabilities. However, the future impact of temperature on severe injuries has not been adequately addressed in previous studies.

We collected national severe injury data and daily meteorological data between the period 2016-2020 across the entire 250 districts in South Korea. We applied a two-stage approach with a time-stratified case-crossover design to derive temperature-related severe injury risk. Using the projected daily mean temperature from six general circulation models (GCMs), we projected the excess number and fraction of severe injuries due to temperature for the historical (2010-2019) and future (2020-2099) periods under three shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenarios.

A total of 237,606 severe injuries during 2016-2020 were identified in this study. We found that exposure to temperature was associated with severe injuries, and these associations are stronger in injuries from transport or contact with chemicals or other substances. Excess severe injuries attributable to temperature were projected to increase to 10.21-15.52% from the 2050s to the 2090s under different SSP scenarios, compared to 8.16% in the historical period. The largest future burden was projected under the SSP5-8.5 scenario, with excess fraction in the 2090s estimated to be 13.83% for injuries due to contact with chemicals or other substances, 12.56% for transport injuries, and 4.86% for falls.

This nationwide study indicates that the temperature rise under the climate change scenario may contribute to an increase in the future burden of injuries in South Korea, particularly transport injuries and injuries due to contact with chemicals or other substances. Our findings may be informative for public health policies aiming at alleviating the health burden in the context of global warming.