Warming trends and impacts of recent heat waves on mortality in Apulia (souther

Global warming is expected to be large with respect the corresponding zonal mean in the Mediterranean region (50% higher than the mean global warming rate). Here we show some observed impact of the ongoing stage of this anomalously large warming on the population of Apulia, where annual temperature has been increasing since the mid of the last century with a trend of 0.18°C that has approximately doubled in the last 50years. This has resulted in a substantial increase of hot days and nights (TX90p and TN90p), whose frequency has often surpassed 25% since the end of the 20^th century. The increase is maximum in summer, particularly in July with many years showing values higher than 3°C above the 1961-1990 average in the last two decades. This warming has produced a corresponding increase of heat waves with impacts on the population mortality in summer. Our analysis is based on the meteorological dataset of the regional network of weather stations (operated by Environmental Protection Regional Agency and Civil Protection Agency of the Apulia region) and the number of deaths provided by ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics). Results clearly show that during summer heat waves mortalities exceed the long term average rate with approximately 10 excess deaths per million inhabitants during hot days when temperature anomalies reach 8°C.

This research has been carried out with financial support from PNRR ITINERIS IR0000032 - Missione 4, Componente 2, Investimento 3.1 “Fondo per la realizzazione di un sistema integrato di infrastrutture di ricerca e innovazione” funded by European Union – NextGenerationEU (CUP B53C22002150006) and from Financial support ICSC – Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, funded by European Union – NextGenerationE Project code CN_00000033, CUP C83C22000560007