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Future population exposure to US heat extremes

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 652–655 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Extreme heat events are likely to become more frequent in the coming decades owing to climate change1,2. Exposure to extreme heat depends not only on changing climate, but also on changes in the size and spatial distribution of the human population. Here we provide a new projection of population exposure to extreme heat for the continental United States that takes into account both of these factors. Using projections from a suite of regional climate models driven by global climate models and forced with the SRES A2 scenario3 and a spatially explicit population projection consistent with the socioeconomic assumptions of that scenario, we project changes in exposure into the latter half of the twenty-first century. We find that US population exposure to extreme heat increases four- to sixfold over observed levels in the late twentieth century, and that changes in population are as important as changes in climate in driving this outcome. Aggregate population growth, as well as redistribution of the population across larger US regions, strongly affects outcomes whereas smaller-scale spatial patterns of population change have smaller effects. The relative importance of population and climate as drivers of exposure varies across regions of the country.

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Figure 1: Aggregate exposure for the continental US in the base period and projected change in exposure for each of the 11 climate models.
Figure 2: Aggregate exposure in the base period and projected change in exposure (both as ensemble means) for each of the nine US census divisions.
Figure 3: Projected changes under the A2 scenario; 1971–2000 to 2041–2070.
Figure 4: Decomposition of aggregate national-level projected change in exposure (ensemble mean).

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Acknowledgements

The contributions of B.J. and B.C.O’N. to this work were supported in part by the DOE Office of Science program on Integrated Assessment of Global Climate Change, award DE-SC0006704. The contributions of L.M. and S.M. were supported in part by the National Science Foundation through the NCAR Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program. C.T. was supported by the Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program (RGCM) of the US Department of Energy’s, Office of Science (BER), Cooperative Agreement DE-FC02-97ER62402.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CUNY Institute for Demographic Research, Baruch College School of Public Affairs, One Bernard Baruch Way, Box D-901 New York, New York 10010-5585, USA

    Bryan Jones

  2. Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000, Boulder, Colorado 80307, USA

    Brian C. O’Neill & Claudia Tebaldi

  3. Computational & Information Systems Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000 Boulder, Colorado 80307, USA

    Larry McDaniel, Seth McGinnis & Linda O. Mearns

Authors
  1. Bryan Jones
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  2. Brian C. O’Neill
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  3. Larry McDaniel
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  4. Seth McGinnis
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  5. Linda O. Mearns
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  6. Claudia Tebaldi
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Contributions

B.J. produced the spatial population projections and the projections of exposure, contributed to methodological design, and wrote the paper. B.C.O’N. contributed significantly to methodological design and editing the paper. L.O.M. leads the NARCCAP team, of which L.M. and S.M. are members. All three provided climate model output, methodological guidance, and contributed to editing the paper. C.T. contributed to methodological design and editing the paper.

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Correspondence to Bryan Jones.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Jones, B., O’Neill, B., McDaniel, L. et al. Future population exposure to US heat extremes. Nature Clim Change 5, 652–655 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2631

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