Health Risks to the Russian Population from Temperature Extremes at the Beginning of the XXI Century

Elena A Grigorieva,Boris A Revich

doi:10.3390/atmos12101331

Abstract

Climate change and climate-sensitive disasters caused by climatic hazards have a significant and increasing direct and indirect impact on human health. Due to its vast area, complex geographical environment and various climatic conditions, Russia is one of the countries that suffers significantly from frequent climate hazards. This paper provides information about temperature extremes in Russia in the beginning of the 21st century, and their impact on human health. A literature search was conducted using the electronic databases Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, and e-Library, focusing on peer-reviewed journal articles published in English and in Russian from 2000 to 2021. The results are summarized in 16 studies, which are divided into location-based groups, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other large cities located in various climatic zones: in the Arctic, in Siberia and in the southern regions, in ultra-continental and monsoon climate. Heat waves in cities with a temperate continental climate lead to a significant increase in all-cause mortality than cold waves, compared with cities in other climatic zones. At the same time, in northern cities, in contrast to the southern regions and central Siberia, the influence of cold waves is more pronounced on mortality than heat waves. To adequately protect the population from the effects of temperature waves and to carry out preventive measures, it is necessary to know specific threshold values of air temperature in each city.

Highlights

It was shown that heat waves were mainly defined as periods with abnormally high temperatures compared to current values, often combined with high humidity, which have an adverse effect on human body, expressed in a statistically significant increase in mortality or morbidity [69,71,72,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,107,108,109,110,111]
In addition to the air temperature measured at a weather station, some papers examined the thermal stress expressed in terms of perceived temperature, i.e., the temperature adjusted for the complex influence of air humidity, wind, clouds and atmospheric pressure on the human body [179,180]
The results of the review of the Russian studies on the assessment of the impact of heat and cold waves on human health were systematized geographically: mortality of the population in capital cities (Moscow, Saint Petersburg); other large cities located in various climatic zones in the Arctic (Arkhangelsk, Magadan, Murmansk, Yakutsk), in Siberia (Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk), southern (Astrakhan, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd) and Far-Eastern (Khabarovsk, Vladivostok) parts of Russia, areas with continental and monsoon climate

Summary

Introduction

It is well documented that climatic and weather extremes – heat and cold waves, floods, droughts, etc., are associated with human-induced climate change, and reflect the growing climatic variability [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41]. Long-term changes in the Earth’s energy balance increase the frequency, intensity and duration of temperature extremes [3,14,16,19,26,27,28,33,35,36,40,41], the probability of compound and cascading events [1,2,6,13,16,17,20,22,24,29,35,41], including wildfires [17,32,34]. The elderly, and people with cardiopulmonary disease are recognized as the most vulnerable groups of the population to the effects of episodes with extreme temperatures [45,53,57,62,64,73,78,81,91,104,116,121,124,127,129]

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Conclusion