Temporal change in minimum mortality temperature under changing climate: A multicountry multicommunity observational study spanning 1986-2015.

BACKGROUND

The minimum mortality temperature (MMT) or MMT percentile (MMTP) is an indicator of population susceptibility to nonoptimum temperatures. MMT and MMTP change over time; however, the changing directions show region-wide heterogeneity. We examined the heterogeneity of temporal changes in MMT and MMTP across multiple communities and in multiple countries.

METHODS

Daily time-series data for mortality and ambient mean temperature for 699 communities in 34 countries spanning 1986-2015 were analyzed using a two-stage meta-analysis. First, a quasi-Poisson regression was employed to estimate MMT and MMTP for each community during the designated subperiods. Second, we pooled the community-specific temporally varying estimates using mixed-effects meta-regressions to examine temporal changes in MMT and MMTP in the entire study population, as well as by climate zone, geographical region, and country.

RESULTS

Temporal increases in MMT and MMTP from 19.5 °C (17.9, 21.1) to 20.3 °C (18.5, 22.0) and from the 74.5 (68.3, 80.6) to 75.0 (71.0, 78.9) percentiles in the entire population were found, respectively. Temporal change was significantly heterogeneous across geographical regions ( < 0.001). Temporal increases in MMT were observed in East Asia (linear slope [LS] = 0.91, = 0.02) and South-East Asia (LS = 0.62, = 0.05), whereas a temporal decrease in MMT was observed in South Europe (LS = -0.46, = 0.05). MMTP decreased temporally in North Europe (LS = -3.45, = 0.02) and South Europe (LS = -2.86, = 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

The temporal change in MMT or MMTP was largely heterogeneous. Population susceptibility in terms of optimum temperature may have changed under a warming climate, albeit with large region-dependent variations.