TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2019//
TI  - Global drivers of minimum mortality temperatures in cities
JO  - Science of the total environment
A1  - Krummenauer, Linda
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Costa, Luís
A1  - Holsten, Anne
A1  - Walther, Carsten
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen P.
SP  - e133560
EP  - e133560
VL  - 695
IS  - 
N2  - Human mortality shows a pronounced temperature dependence. The minimum mortality temperature (MMT) as a characteristic point of the temperature-mortality relationship is influenced by many factors. As MMT estimates are based on case studies, they are sporadic, limited to data-rich regions, and their drivers have not yet been clearly identified across case studies. This impedes the elaboration of spatially comprehensive impact studies on heat-related mortality and hampers the temporal transfer required to assess climate change impacts. Using 400 MMTs from cities, we systematically establish a generalised model that is able to estimate MMTs (in daily apparent temperature) for cities, based on a set of climatic, topographic and socio-economic drivers. A sigmoid model prevailed against alternative model setups due to having the lowest Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) and the smallest RMSE. We find the long-term climate, the elevation, and the socio-economy to be relevant drivers of our MMT sample within the non-linear parametric regression model. A first model application estimated MMTs for 599 European cities (>100 000 inhabitants) and reveals a pronounced decrease in MMTs (27.8-16 °C) from southern to northern cities. Disruptions of this pattern across regions of similar mean temperatures can be explained by socio-economic standards as noted for central eastern Europe. Our alternative method allows to approximate MMTs independently from the availability of daily mortality records. For the first time, a quantification of climatic and non-climatic MMT drivers has been achieved, which allows to consider changes in socio-economic conditions and climate. This work contributes to the comparability among MMTs beyond location-specific and regional limits and, hence, towards a spatially comprehensive impact assessment for heat-related mortality.<br><br>Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0048-9697
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.07.366
ID  - ref1
ER  -