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. 2021 Sep 24;5(5):e169.
doi: 10.1097/EE9.0000000000000169. eCollection 2021 Oct.

Geographical Variations of the Minimum Mortality Temperature at a Global Scale: A Multicountry Study

Aurelio Tobías  1   2 , Masahiro Hashizume  3 , Yasushi Honda  4 , Francesco Sera  5 , Chris Fook Sheng Ng  2 , Yoonhee Kim  6 , Dominic Roye  7 , Yeonseung Chung  8 , Tran Ngoc Dang  9 , Ho Kim  10 , Whanhee Lee  11 , Carmen Íñiguez  12 , Ana Vicedo-Cabrera  13   14 , Rosana Abrutzky  15 , Yuming Guo  16 , Shilu Tong  17 , Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho  18 , Paulo Hilario Nascimento Saldiva  18 , Eric Lavigne  19 , Patricia Matus Correa  20 , Nicolás Valdés Ortega  20 , Haidong Kan  21 , Samuel Osorio  22 , Jan Kyselý  23 , Aleš Urban  23 , Hans Orru  24 , Ene Indermitte  24 , Jouni J K Jaakkola  25 , Niilo R I Ryti  25 , Mathilde Pascal  26 , Veronika Huber  27 , Alexandra Schneider  28 , Klea Katsouyanni  29   30 , Antonis Analitis  29 , Alireza Entezari  31 , Fatemeh Mayvaneh  31 , Patrick Goodman  32 , Ariana Zeka  33 , Paola Michelozzi  34 , Francesca de'Donato  34 , Barrak Alahmad  35 , Magali Hurtado Diaz  36 , César De la Cruz Valencia  36 , Ala Overcenco  37 , Danny Houthuijs  38 , Caroline Ameling  38 , Shilpa Rao  39 , Francesco Di Ruscio  39 , Gabriel Carrasco  40 , Xerxes Seposo  2 , Baltazar Nunes  41 , Joana Madureira  41   42 , Iulian-Horia Holobaca  43 , Noah Scovronick  44 , Fiorella Acquaotta  45 , Bertil Forsberg  46 , Christofer Åström  46 , Martina S Ragettli  47   48 , Yue-Liang Leon Guo  49 , Bing-Yu Chen  50 , Shanshan Li  16 , Valentina Colistro  51 , Antonella Zanobetti  35 , Joel Schwartz  35 , Do Van Dung  9 , Ben Armstrong  52 , Antonio Gasparrini  52   53   54
Affiliations

Geographical Variations of the Minimum Mortality Temperature at a Global Scale: A Multicountry Study

Aurelio Tobías et al. Environ Epidemiol. .

Abstract

Background: Minimum mortality temperature (MMT) is an important indicator to assess the temperature-mortality association, indicating long-term adaptation to local climate. Limited evidence about the geographical variability of the MMT is available at a global scale.

Methods: We collected data from 658 communities in 43 countries under different climates. We estimated temperature-mortality associations to derive the MMT for each community using Poisson regression with distributed lag nonlinear models. We investigated the variation in MMT by climatic zone using a mixed-effects meta-analysis and explored the association with climatic and socioeconomic indicators.

Results: The geographical distribution of MMTs varied considerably by country between 14.2 and 31.1 °C decreasing by latitude. For climatic zones, the MMTs increased from alpine (13.0 °C) to continental (19.3 °C), temperate (21.7 °C), arid (24.5 °C), and tropical (26.5 °C). The MMT percentiles (MMTPs) corresponding to the MMTs decreased from temperate (79.5th) to continental (75.4th), arid (68.0th), tropical (58.5th), and alpine (41.4th). The MMTs indreased by 0.8 °C for a 1 °C rise in a community's annual mean temperature, and by 1 °C for a 1 °C rise in its SD. While the MMTP decreased by 0.3 centile points for a 1 °C rise in a community's annual mean temperature and by 1.3 for a 1 °C rise in its SD.

Conclusions: The geographical distribution of the MMTs and MMTPs is driven mainly by the mean annual temperature, which seems to be a valuable indicator of overall adaptation across populations. Our results suggest that populations have adapted to the average temperature, although there is still more room for adaptation.

Keywords: Adaptation; Climate; Distributed lag nonlinear models; Minimum mortality temperature; Multi-city; Multi-country; Time-series.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest with regard to the content of this report.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Geographical distribution of the MMT (°C) in the 658 communities analyzed.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Pooled MMT (°C) by geographical region and Köppen’s climate classification.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Geographical distribution of the MMTP (%) in the 658 communities analyzed.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Pooled MMTP (%) by geographical region and Köppen’s climate classification.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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