Excessive heat caused the deaths of 2,155 people this summer
This summer has been the third with the highest mortality attributable to excessive heat, with 2,155 deaths, after the heat wave of 2003 and the summer of 2022, which accumulated 3,012 deaths. This is one of the conclusions that emerge from a new digital tool, a web application still in the development phase, created by scientists from the Institute of Environmental Diagnostics and Water Studies (Idaea-CSIC) of Barcelona, the University of Valencia and the Climate Research Foundation.
The web application called Mortality Attributable to Heat in Spain (MACE) is based on data from the Daily Mortality Monitoring system (MOMO) of the Carlos III Health Institute and the temperatures recorded by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) to be able to calculate the mortality attributable to moderate heat, extreme heat and excessive heat in the period of the year from June to August.
It is updated daily but, like the MOMO and Aemet data, it is two days late. Its authors are working so that, in addition to national data, the tool provides information about differences by province and vulnerable population groups (age and gender).. They also propose to extend data collection from May to October for the next version of the application, scheduled for 2024.
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Since January, the MoMo has recorded 329,462 deaths, 6,834 attributable to temperature, according to the latest published report. Thus, Galicia with 1,704 is the most affected community, followed by Andalusia with 1,276 and Castilla y León with 683..
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Aurelio Tobías, researcher at Idaea and author of the work, explains to this newspaper that Aemet and the Ministry of Health give notice of the arrival of a heat wave but do not report the potential impact on health or the impact on the isolated days of extreme heat. In his opinion, the MOMO is a “very good system for monitoring daily mortality from all causes, which is something that requires a very great effort”, but with regard to mortality due to heat it could be improved “from environmental epidemiology.” “. Remember, also, that it takes about two years until the National Institute of Statistics (INE) “defines the causes of mortality and the age groups”, so in real time what is known is the trend.
It also clarifies that, for now, MACE, by offering a national image of what is happening and not discriminating by geographic areas, may be offering an overestimated mortality.. That is to say, a heat wave causing excess mortality does not affect the entire country at the same time and equally, contrary to what the application reflects.
Tobías also indicates that excess mortality due to heat, something that occurs more in older people and people with cardiovascular and respiratory pathologies, is usually related to deaths from heat stroke, which would be much fewer: 285 cases registered in Spain between 1990 and 2016. , according to an article published this month in Epidemiology.
The new application, according to the researcher, has been well received among scientists in his field, who consider it necessary in a context of climate change and progressive increase in temperatures and also very useful due to the possibility it offers of being able to take into account the historical evolution.
How is mortality calculated in the new app?
In the application, the mortality attributable to moderate heat “is calculated as the sum of the contributions of the days of the summer of 2023 with temperatures between the temperature of minimum mortality as a counterfactual reference and the 95th percentile of the temperature distribution between June and September for the last ten years”.
Extreme heat attributable mortality, “as the sum of contributions from days above the 95th percentile”. And mortality attributable to excessive heat, which is considered as a part of extreme heat, “as the sum of the contributions of days above the 95th percentile as a counterfactual reference.”
The definition of the extreme heat threshold as the 95th percentile of the temperature distribution between June and September during the last ten years is based “on the similarity with the definition of the reference thresholds of health impact due to high temperatures of the National Plan of Preventive Actions of the Effects of Excess Temperatures of the Ministry of Health”.