Heat waves and heat days in an arid city in the northwest of México: current trends and in climate change scenarios

Abstract

The aim of this work is to study heat waves (HWs) in Mexicali, Mexico, because numerous deaths have been reported in this city, caused by heatstroke. This research acquires relevancy because several studies have projected that the health impacts of HWs could increase under various climate change scenarios, especially in countries with low adaptive capacity, as is our case. This paper has three objectives: first, to analyze the observed change in the summer (1 June to 15 September) daily maximum temperature during the period from 1951 to 2006; secondly, to characterize the annual and monthly evolution of frequency, duration and intensity of HWs; and finally, to generate scenarios of heat days (HDs) by means of a statistical downscaling model, in combination with a global climate model (HadCM3), for the 2020 s, 2050 s, and 2080 s. The results show summer maximum temperatures featured warming and cooling periods from 1951 until the mid-1980s and, later, a rising tendency, which prevailed until 2006. The duration and intensity of HWs have increased for all summer months, which is an indicator of the severity of the problem; in fact, there are 2.3 times more HWs now than in the decade of the 1970s. The most appropriate distribution for modeling the occurrence of HDs was the Weibull, with the maximum temperature as co-variable. For the 2020 s, 2050 s, and 2080 s, HDs under a medium-high emissions scenario (A2) could increase relative to 1961-1990, by 2.1, 3.6, and 5.1 times, respectively, whereas under a medium-low emissions scenario (B2), HDs could increase by 2.4, 3.4, and 4.0, for the same projections of time.

The Statistical DownScaling Model: insights from one decade of application

“…Publication trends reveal an overwhelming interest in water-sector impacts, followed to a lesser extent by agriculture. Downscaling for sectors such as human health and the built environment has received relatively little attention until recently but these are clearly emerging topics (Doyon et al, 2008;Holloway et al, 2008;Wilby, 2008b;Wise, 2009;Zhou et al, 2009;Cueto et al, 2010;Chung et al, 2011).…”

Towards a monitoring system of temperature extremes in Europe

“…This is done at both grid-point and regional level. Other distributions have been applied in the literature -such as the gamma (Meehl et al, 2000) or the Weibull distribution (Cueto et al, 2010).…”

“…The heat wave in Russia during the summer 2010, considered as the strongest in the last 30 years (Barriopedro et al, 2011;Russo et al, 2015), caused more than 55 000 deaths and EUR 500 million of damage. In February 2012 a cold wave over central and eastern Europe generated more than EUR 700 million of damage, and 825 deaths were reported (de'Donato et al, 2013). Monitoring and cataloguing these events are crucial in order to place an event in its historical perspective and in order to assess the potential impacts on human health and activities by combining the information with data from other catalogues (such as EM-DAT, http://www.emdat.be, which includes information on the impacts).…”

Evolution of heat wave occurrence over the Paris basin (France) in the 21st century

“…In climate studies, numerous definitions have been proposed (e.g. Huth et al 2000, Meehl & Tebaldi 2004, Beniston et al 2007, Fischer & Schär 2010, Cueto et al 2010, Kuglitsch et al 2010, most of them based on the crossing of a threshold of temperature or on a percentile of temperature associated with a minimum duration. For instance, Kuglitsch et al (2010) consider periods of 3 or more consecutive hot days and nights.…”