Study: AZ Heat Deaths Rising, W. An Estimated 900 1980 - 2017 Attributable To Higher Average Temps
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Parks recently published a study examining how unusual temperatures contribute to deaths from accidents and injuries. For our analysis, Parks adapted his model to estimate how many additional deaths — from any cause — occur during warmer-than-average months. The goal: pick out the signal of climate’s role in heat-related deaths from the “noise” of other risk factors.
His model suggests that around 900 deaths in Arizona from 1980-2017 can be attributed to warmer-than-average monthly temperatures. This “climate-scale signal” of heat-related deaths includes the effect of long-term warming as well as year-to-year fluctuations in climate. The trend over those decades is on the upswing, a preview of what scientists warn is to come. More details on our methodology are available here.
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Despite this relative wealth of data, the climate impact has been tricky to tease out. For instance: The Phoenix area saw a big jump in heat deaths in 2016, and those numbers have remained high ever since, said David Hondula, a professor at Arizona State University who researches the role of temperature and other factors on such deaths. Temperature, he found, did not hold the smoking gun. “We asked, was 2016 unusually hot compared to the previous period? And any way we spliced the data, we couldn’t reach the conclusion that more people should have died in 2016 just because of the weather,” he said.
But that study looked at how hot 2016 was compared to the previous decade, an already warmer-than-average period. Parks’ model uses a longer time span, and it suggests a spike in climate-related heat deaths that year with a moderate decrease in 2017. Hondula, who said the model seems sound, noted that looking farther back allows the climate signal to come through more strongly. Parks’ method puts an estimated number to the death toll, but it can’t quantify the percentage of Arizona heat deaths that could be blamed on the changing climate. Even though the state has some of the most comprehensive accounting of heat deaths in the country, Hondula and other experts warn that the official numbers, drawn largely from death certificates, are still probably undercounts.
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https://publicintegrity.org/environment/hidden-epidemics/heat-deaths-climate-change-arizona/
