The Dynamic Relationship between Temperature and Morbidity

Temperature and mental health: Evidence from the spectrum of mental health outcomes

“…Barreca et al, 2016;Heutel et al, 2017). White (2017) finds similar functional relationships between ambient temperatures and hospital visits for a wide range of illnesses. Heat exposure has also been linked to increases in negative physical outcomes specifically tied to mental well-being, including exhaustion, and disturbed sleep (Kovats and Hajat, 2008).…”

“…Mental health appears to deteriorate with increased temperatures across the range of temperatures considered. In contrast, physical health measures respond negatively to both extreme cold and heat, with increases in negative outcomes observable at both ends of the temperature spectrum (leading to the the U-shaped dose-response curves exemplified by the findings of Barreca et al, 2016;Heutel et al, 2017;White, 2017). The character of the relationship between mental health and temperatures is instead more closely mirrored by results linking temperatures to emotional well-being (Noelke et al, 2016), violent crime (?…”

What to Expect When It Gets Hotter: The Impacts of Prenatal Exposure to Extreme Heat on Maternal Health

“…A burgeoning literature has identified adverse short-term impacts of extreme temperatures on several population outcomes, including elderly mortality (Deschênes and Moretti, 2009;Deschênes and Greenstone, 2011), emergency department visits and hospitalizations (Green et al, 2010;White, 2017), and cognitive performance (Cho, 2017;Garg et al, 2018;Goodman et al, 2018;Graff Zivin, Hsiang, and Neidell, 2018). Further, two recent studies have shown that in utero heat exposure has lasting negative effects on long-term cognitive ability (Hu and Li, 2019) and adult earnings (Isen, Rossin-Slater, and Walker, 2017), highlighting the sensitivity of the prenatal period to extreme heat.…”

What to Expect When It Gets Hotter

“…Our study contributes to a burgeoning literature, which has identified adverse shortterm impacts of extreme temperature on several outcomes, including elderly mortality (Deschênes and Moretti 2009;Deschênes and Greenstone 2011), population-level emergency department visits and hospitalizations (Green et al 2010;White 2017), and cognitive performance (Cho 2017;Garg, Jagnani, and Taraz 2018;Goodman et al 2018;Graff Zivin, Hsiang, and Neidell 2018). Multiple studies have further documented negative effects of in utero heat exposure on birth outcomes-including birth weight, gestation length, and the probability of stillbirth (e.g., Deschênes, Greenstone, and Guryan 2009;Dadvand, Basagana, and Sartini 2011;Schifano et al 2016;Auger et al 2017;Ha, Liu, Zhu, Kim, Sherman, Grantz, and Mendola 2017;Kuehn and McCormick 2017;Barreca and Schaller 2020;Bekkar et al 2020)-highlighting the sensitivity of the prenatal period to extreme heat.…”