Over the last few days the temperature in Taiwan has shot up and the media has been awash with articles of how people can avoid the worst of the heat wave. The papers have also been full of stories about the number of heat-related deaths. Questions have been raised as to the potential health risks posed by the scorching heat, when in fact the best way to deal with this problem, and to reduce the health risks posed by climate change, is to establish some form of early warning mechanism.
Environmental protection and health professionals in Taiwan have for many years now taken the impact of global warming on health very seriously. The National Science Council (NSC) has also been aware of the problem for some time. National Taiwan University set up the Global Change Research Center (GCRC) a while back, and the NSC is funding academic research into the effect of climate change in Taiwan and what ecological changes are going to mean for people’s health, predicting how the situation is likely to evolve.
Over the last century Taiwan’s average temperature has increased by between 1.1 and 1.4 percent, twice the global average. The temperature of the surrounding oceans has risen at a higher rate, having a considerable impact on the fishing ecology.
Both excessively high and excessively low temperatures can have an impact on health. The West is more preoccupied with heat waves caused by global warming, but, for the time being at least, these will have relatively little effect on people in Taiwan because we are more used to living in a hot climate. On the other side of the coin, however, we are more vulnerable to drops in temperature.
The biggest threat posed by either high or low temperatures is the possibility of cardiovascular or respiratory diseases. Fatalities from these two types of disease have an extremely marked inverse relationship with temperature: The number of deaths caused by them is low during warm weather and high during the winter months for humans.
The optimum temperature is in the range of 25˚C to 29˚C. If it goes above 30˚C or below 20˚C the risk of deaths increases, but there is more to fear from the cold than the heat. If temperatures fall below 15˚C, the risk of death from either type of disease among the elderly shoots up by between 30 and 40 percent. Compare that with a less than 5 percent rise in the risk of fatalities with temperatures over 30˚C. In Taiwan, then, deaths are more likely to occur from a drop in temperature than from a hike.
So what can we expect from an increase in global temperatures in terms of how it will affect the well-being of the Taiwanese? We should expect fewer days of low temperature during the winter months and higher temperatures during the summer. As Taiwanese are more used to a hot climate, there will be a period of time when, because of the warmer winters, temperature-related deaths will fall.
According to figures released by the GCRC, however, by the summer of 2050, temperatures of more than 35˚C will become more frequent, and 40˚C or more will not be unheard of.
Taiwan’s population is aging, and by 2050 it is predicted that a quarter of the population will be elderly. Heat-related deaths are consequently also expected to rise, and to rise by a significant amount. The heat island effect caused by high rise buildings and high density clusters of buildings will make summer temperatures in Taipei soar above those felt in, say, Kaohsiung, and heat waves are going to hit Taipei residents much harder. We predict that beyond 2050 the number of heat-related deaths during the height of summer will be three or four times higher than at present.
The experience of Western countries in recent summers demonstrates how lethal heat waves can be. The lack of an adequate early warning system was a major contributing factor, but cities like London and Paris have learned their lesson and have established warning systems. The danger may not be imminent in Taiwan, but at some point we are going to have to think about implementing our own heat wave early warning system.
Sung Fung-chang is a professor and acting dean of the China Medical University College of Public Health.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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