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Human impacts

Winter weather and health

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 173–174 (2014)Cite this article

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There has been much debate about whether winter warming due to climate change will substantially decrease mortality in that season. Research now finds that cold severity no longer predicts the number of excess winter deaths in England and Wales.

For centuries, the seasons and weather have been considered fundamental determinants of human health. In temperate climates, there is a distinctive seasonal pattern of mortality — with a significant number of additional deaths in winter — known as excess winter deaths (EWDs). Assessments of the health impacts of climate change have often concluded that a reduction in the severity and length of cold weather because of global warming would substantially reduce EWDs1,2. However, the accuracy of these predictions depends on how much of this winter mortality is directly dependent on cold outdoor temperatures, as opposed to other factors. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Staddon and colleagues3 suggest that the association of annual variation in EWDs with the number of cold days that was observed until the mid-1970s has now disappeared, leaving only the incidence of influenza-like illnesses to explain any of the yearly variation in EWDs during the past decade. By looking at data for England and Wales, they conclude it is unlikely that EWDs will decrease in the region if winters warm with climate change.

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Figure 1: Detrended data showing the year-to-year variation in excess winter deaths compared with the number of winter days below 5 °C.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cunrui Huang is in the Centre for Environmental and Population Health, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Queensland 4111, Australia and the School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University, 74 Zhongshan Road #2, Guangzhou 510080, China,

    Cunrui Huang

  2. Adrian Barnett is in the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, 60 Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove, Queensland 4059, Australia,

    Adrian Barnett

Authors
  1. Cunrui Huang
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  2. Adrian Barnett
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Correspondence to Cunrui Huang or Adrian Barnett.

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Huang, C., Barnett, A. Winter weather and health. Nature Clim Change 4, 173–174 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2146

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