Projected impact of heat on mortality and labour productivity under climate change in Switzerland

Stalhandske, Zélie; Nesa, Valentina; Zumwald, Marius; Ragettli, Martina S.; Galimshina, Alina; Holthausen, Niels; Röösli, Martin; Bresch, David N.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-2531-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-2531-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-2531-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 8

Research article

|

09 Aug 2022

Research article |

| 09 Aug 2022

Projected impact of heat on mortality and labour productivity under climate change in Switzerland

Zélie Stalhandske, Valentina Nesa, Marius Zumwald, Martina S. Ragettli, Alina Galimshina, Niels Holthausen, Martin Röösli, and David N. Bresch

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Aug 2022)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 02 Dec 2021)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

CC1: 'Comment on nhess-2021-361 WBGT calculations', Jonathan Buzan, 07 Dec 2021

The WBGT calculated in the manuscript is not WBGT and is an approximation. The authors should state this plainly.

WBGT is a standardization that is an engineering fit to in situ data. Since WBGT is an engineering fit, modifying the equation changes the range of validation. WIthout comparing their ad hoc approach with measured direct measurements of WBGT, their outcomes are guesswork, and the authors should plainly state this.

Furthermore, the authors are attempting to calculate an indoor WBGT from meteorological measurements. The R package has 3 different WBGT calculations: 2 ad hoc caclculations, and 1 that is thoroughly stressed tested to represent outdoor environments. The indoor calibration in the R package is not the official WBGT, and should be noted in the manuscript that this is an ad hoc calibration. Furthermore, the authors are not measuring indoor humidity. The authors do not state how they get humidity at all. The ad hoc calibration for indoor WBGT in the R package calculates a psychrometric wet bulb temperature (it is not Bernard, 1999 as the R package is labeled, but actually Lemke and Kjellstrom, 2012 approximation). There are many assumptions in Lemke and Kjellstrom, 2012 approxmiation of Bernard's methods about the indoor radiation, humidity, and temperature environment that are heavily dependent on ventilation, worker metabolic activity, physical fitness, and clothing. Indoor humidity and temperature can vary substantially from outdoor measurements, depending on the working environment (Bernard, 1999). The authors Equations 2,3 in SI do not have moisture in them at all.
The authors should remove the word WBGT from their manuscript and replace it with a clear statement that this is an ad hoc calibration and that there are severe limtations to the interpretations of labor productivity.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-361-CC1
RC1:
'Comment on nhess-2021-361', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Dec 2021

Please see the attachment.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-361-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Zélie Stalhandske, 24 Feb 2022
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://nhess.copernicus.org/preprints/nhess-2021-361/nhess-2021-361-AC1-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-361-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on nhess-2021-361', Anonymous Referee #2, 23 Dec 2021

See attached pdf for comments.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-361-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Zélie Stalhandske, 24 Feb 2022
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://nhess.copernicus.org/preprints/nhess-2021-361/nhess-2021-361-AC2-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-361-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (28 Feb 2022) by Vassiliki Kotroni

AR by Zélie Stalhandske on behalf of the Authors (22 Apr 2022) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (29 Apr 2022) by Vassiliki Kotroni

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 May 2022)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (20 May 2022)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised manuscript has considerably improved compared to the first version. Descriptions and discussions are now much easier to follow. Overall, it is nice to see a comprehensive assessment of heat stress on health and labor productivity under different scenarios of climate change for a European country.

I think that the manuscript is now close to a version that can be published. I only have two more reservations regarding the computation of heat-related mortality.

Since the framework of attributable fraction (computed as AF=(RR-1)/RR) is used, I was surprised to read that the authors scale the observed averaged daily mortality by RR before multiplying it with AF to derive attributable mortality (ll. 88-90). To my understanding the authors should simply use the total observed averaged daily mortality.

The other issue that is still not really clear to me is why the authors do not use a continuous temperature scale, but consider the RR only per full degree of Tmax. I assume that they simply round the maximum temperature to the nearest integer, thereby actually binning the temperature into Tmax+/-0.5°C. Unless there are computational restrictions or issues of data availability, I would think that the more straightforward approach would be to compute the RR on a finer scale, by simply including the Tmax per day at the resolution available (if >22°C) into the polynomial function given in the appendix, and finally summing attributable deaths over all days.

If the authors stick to the approach that is currently used I think these two issues still need further explanation and justification.

In addition, I have the following minor points:
- l.160: “the real number of observed deaths” is a bit misleading. Maybe write something like “and use the averaged observed daily deaths as the mortality baseline”
- l.225: “The influence of heat waves…” is an incomplete sentence.

Last but not least, merely as an advice for future work, I would like to point out that it has been a bit difficult to see the changes made to the manuscript because the tracked changes version did only include the major corrections. Also, the authors could have included line numbers in their responses to guide the reviewers to the sentences/parts where changes were introduced, even if they were minor.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Jun 2022) by Vassiliki Kotroni

AR by Zélie Stalhandske on behalf of the Authors (10 Jun 2022) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (29 Jun 2022) by Vassiliki Kotroni

AR by Zélie Stalhandske on behalf of the Authors (06 Jul 2022)

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Short summary

We model the impacts of heat on both mortality and labour productivity in Switzerland in a changing climate. We estimate 658 heat-related death currently per year in Switzerland and CHF 665 million in losses in labour productivity. Should we remain on a high-emissions pathway, these values may double or even triple by the end of the century. Under a lower-emissions scenario impacts are expected to slightly increase and peak by around mid-century.