Geographical Variations of the Minimum Mortality Temperature at a Global Scale: A Multicountry Study.

Tobías, Aurelio; Hashizume, Masahiro; Honda, Yasushi; Sera, Francesco; Ng, Chris Fook Sheng; Kim, Yoonhee; Roye, Dominic; Chung, Yeonseung; Dang, Tran Ngoc; Kim, Ho; Lee, Whanhee; Íñiguez, Carmen; Vicedo-Cabrera, Ana; Abrutzky, Rosana; Guo, Yuming; Tong, Shilu; Coelho, Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio; Saldiva, Paulo Hilario Nascimento; Lavigne, Eric; Correa, Patricia Matus; ... (2021). Geographical Variations of the Minimum Mortality Temperature at a Global Scale: A Multicountry Study. Environmental epidemiology, 5(5), e169. Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins 10.1097/EE9.0000000000000169

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Background

Minimum mortality temperature (MMT) is an important indicator to assess the temperature-mortality association, indicating long-term adaptation to local climate. Limited evidence about the geographical variability of the MMT is available at a global scale.

Methods

We collected data from 658 communities in 43 countries under different climates. We estimated temperature-mortality associations to derive the MMT for each community using Poisson regression with distributed lag nonlinear models. We investigated the variation in MMT by climatic zone using a mixed-effects meta-analysis and explored the association with climatic and socioeconomic indicators.

Results

The geographical distribution of MMTs varied considerably by country between 14.2 and 31.1 °C decreasing by latitude. For climatic zones, the MMTs increased from alpine (13.0 °C) to continental (19.3 °C), temperate (21.7 °C), arid (24.5 °C), and tropical (26.5 °C). The MMT percentiles (MMTPs) corresponding to the MMTs decreased from temperate (79.5th) to continental (75.4th), arid (68.0th), tropical (58.5th), and alpine (41.4th). The MMTs indreased by 0.8 °C for a 1 °C rise in a community's annual mean temperature, and by 1 °C for a 1 °C rise in its SD. While the MMTP decreased by 0.3 centile points for a 1 °C rise in a community's annual mean temperature and by 1.3 for a 1 °C rise in its SD.

Conclusions

The geographical distribution of the MMTs and MMTPs is driven mainly by the mean annual temperature, which seems to be a valuable indicator of overall adaptation across populations. Our results suggest that populations have adapted to the average temperature, although there is still more room for adaptation.

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5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

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