A new online tool out of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health (YCCCH) strives to provide hyperlocal information about the range of extreme weather risks on mortality, including the potential impact on older adults.
Researchers used peer-reviewed mortality data from 2007-2020 for the XToll climate dashboard. It visualizes how each relevant weather extreme in the county compares to all the others in the U.S. For example, Hartford County has a heat ranking of nearly 67%, while The Bronx, which has some of the highest heat vulnerability in NYC, has a ranking of almost 95%.
“We hope this kind of toolbox could be useful for the public to first understand their risks, but also maybe for the local government to say, in terms of different risk factors, which are leading to more health costs,” said Dr. Kai Chen, YCCCH faculty director and professor at the Yale School of Public Health.
As the planet continues to warm over time from humans burning fossil fuels, weather extremes are expected to also increase in frequency and intensity. And the health of older adults are especially vulnerable to these extremes.
“Older adults tend to maybe have higher social isolation, and older adults may have an impaired sense of their surrounding environment, or have increased prevalence of chronic conditions,” Chen said.
Heat stress, flooding and poor air quality can all have significant impacts on the elderly population, which is expected to grow in the coming decades.
He said that’s why aging and climate change need to be tackled together, not apart.
“Knowledge is about information, it's about whether now people realize this is a risk,” Chen said.
In the last year and a half, the federal government has dismantled jobs, programs, and funding streams to monitor and protect people from climate change impacts.
Chen said continuing to have accurate, reliable monitoring of climate change data is critical to public health – and said that includes having qualified federal staff to handle that information.
Looking forward, YCCCH is developing a more user-friendly dashboard where people can download the data about extreme weather event risks and economic cost to their own counties, Chen said.
The dashboard is based on peer-reviewed publications, so there’s a few years’ lag in the data. Chen said they hope to update the data in the coming years when they get more funding.
“We are working to try to add the climate change piece in the future,” Chen said. “What are these extreme weather events going to be looking like, and then what are the health consequences associated with that?”
