Impact of Persistent Heatwave on Heat-Related Illness

Since 2000, numerous people have suffered from heat-related illness and even died of the heatwave, and more than thousands of people in Korea share the similar pain and loss since 2010. The extremely high temperature and humid are known to be responsible for illness and death; however, the spatial correlation between highest temperature and occurrence of heat-related illness seems relatively low according to the previous studies. There can be many reasons for this, one of which is social aspect. Another reason of the varying probability of occurrence can be the duration of the temperature. Therefore, in this paper, in order to analyze the impacts of persistent high temperatures on the occurrence of heatwave disease, we analyzed the number of days of heatwave days and tropical night days immediately preceding the date of the onset of heat-related illness. This research was supported by a grant(2020-MOIS35-002) of Policy-linked Technology Development Program on Natural Disaster Prevention and Mitigation funded by Ministry of Interior and Safety(MOIS, Korea).