Abstract
Intensification of extreme temperatures combined with other socioeconomic factors may exacerbate human thermal risk. The disastrous impacts of extreme weather during the last two decades demonstrated the increased vulnerability of populations even in developed countries from Europe, which are expected to efficiently manage adverse weather. The study aims to assess trends in the exposure of European populations to extreme weather using updated historical climatic data in large European cities of different local climates and a set of climatic and bioclimatic indices. Colder cities experience higher warming rates in winter (exceeding 1 °C/decade since the mid-1970s) and warmer cities in summer. Hot extremes have almost tripled in most cities during the last two or three decades with simultaneous advancing of hot weather, while northernmost cities have experienced an unprecedented increase in the heat waves frequency only during the last decade. Bioclimatic indices suggested a robust tendency towards less cold-related stress (mainly in cold cities) and more heat-related stress in all cities. A doubling or tripling in the frequency of heat-related ‘great discomfort’ was found in southern cities, while in the cities of northern Europe, heat-related ‘discomfort’ conditions are becoming increasingly more frequent and have nearly quadrupled during the last decade.
Highlights
Climate change related to anthropogenic forcing has received outstanding scientific attention over the last few decades
According to the last IPCC Report it is of vital importance to limit global warming below 1.5 ◦ C instead of the limit of 2 ◦ C adopted in the Paris Agreement with respect to the pre-industrial levels, since the extra warming could pose much additional risk to ecosystems—possibly causing irreversible changes—and to humans [3,4]
It is known that urban environments further increase vulnerability to heat-related risk due to the urban heat island (UHI) effect and the synergistic interaction between Heat Wave (HW) and UHIs [35,36]
Summary
Climate change related to anthropogenic forcing has received outstanding scientific attention over the last few decades. Exposure of populations to extreme temperatures and subsequent risk involves multiple contributing variables related to climatic and non-climatic factors Socioeconomic components such as age, health status, poverty, adaptive capacity, access to cooling/heating systems, and others seem to largely influence the vulnerability of a population to thermal stress [17,32,33]. It is known that urban environments further increase vulnerability to heat-related risk due to the urban heat island (UHI) effect and the synergistic interaction between HWs and UHIs [35,36] Such synergies may increase the heat-related mortality rate in cities by four times when compared to rural areas [25,37]. To better manage the adverse effects of extreme temperatures and consequent thermal stress in European populations, it is important to assess and quantify contemporary warming rates along with changes in extreme temperatures and other indices accounting for human body thermal sensation.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
