Academic literature on the topic 'Medical Climatoloy'

Abstract The article explores how Victorian visual culture was a vital force in the construction and dissemination of medical theories on the connection between climate and health. During the nineteenth century, the seemingly inexplicable and deadly nature of many epidemic diseases compelled British medics to investigate all possible reasons for their spread. Focusing on cholera, the article will examine how, in an effort to understand what was seen at the time as a mysterious disease, Victorian medics increasingly concentrated on the climate of India and unusual weather in Britain as propagators of the malady. Supplementing the dominant miasma theory, medics explained how the seemingly airborne sources of cholera resulted from a state of England’s air that resembled the tropical environment of the subcontinent. In an effort to highlight the correlation between cholera and the atmosphere, they produced medical climatology reports containing diagrams that juxtaposed the data on the disease’s mortality rates with measurements of meteorological phenomena. These images, rather than serving simply as illustrations, became a crucial part of medical arguments. As the article will demonstrate, in attempting to visualize the medical climatology of cholera, the diagrams mapped the disease to certain atmospheric conditions, suggesting that cholera could be quantified and controlled. Yet, in doing so, the images also implied that cholera had a real material presence in the air of Britain, powerfully evoking visual tropes of the disease as a substance that had the potential to contaminate the very landscape of the nation.

Climate is an active, powerful factor that can have a powerful therapeutic effect. Climatotherapy is prescribed for the purpose of General strengthening effects on the body, to stimulate its defenses, increase non-specific resistance, especially in chronic or sluggish pathological processes. The effect of climate therapy is manifested in the body's responses to environmental factors, the main condition of which is the use of physiologically based methods of dosing climate procedures. The bioclimatic station (BCS) of the resort of Yevpatoria carries out meteorological observations of medical orientation and their dosing. The creation of a modern center of climatotherapy, as a scientific-clinical Department of medical climatology on the basis of the BCS will allow to organize a single service on introduction of modern methods of climatotherapy in Evpatoria and the Republic of Crimea, improve the quality of the holiday of climateprotection and effectiveness of climatotherapy.

Aim. To assess the influence of the climatic and weather patterns at the South Coast of Crimea (SCC) on the effectiveness of health resort medical rehabilitation of patients with lung diseases (LD).Materials and methods. A study carried in a group of 197 patients with LD. The influence of climatic and weather patterns at the SCC were assessed using the methods developed by the Academician Research Institute of Physical Methods of Treatment, Medical Climatology and Rehabilitation named after I.M. Sechenov – modified clinical index on weather pathogenicity and medical rehabilitation assessment according to the criteria of the “International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health” (ICF).Results. Regression equations for the dynamics of the ICF domains b280, b430, b4303 and for the mean value of all domains on the values of air temperature, wind speed, cloudiness, and air temperature variability have been developed, which allow to reliably form a rehabilitation prognosis for patients with LD for all terms of health resort treatment in the SCC.Conclusion. The use of modernized clinical indices of weather pathogenicity allows one to adequately assess and predict the effect of weather dynamics and form a rehabilitation prognosis for patients with LD.

Abstract. Toward the goal of linking wind shear with the mesoscale organization of deep convection, a procedure for producing a climatology of tropical wind shear from the output of the Met Office Unified Model climate model is presented. Statistical information from wind profiles from tropical grid columns is used to produce a tractable number (10) of profiles that efficiently span the space of all wind profiles. Physical arguments are used to filter wind profiles that are likely to be associated with organized convection: only grid columns with substantial convective available potential energy (CAPE) and those with shear in the upper quartile are considered. The profiles are rotated so that their wind vectors at 850 hPa are aligned, in order to be able to group like profiles together, and their magnitudes at each level are normalized. To emphasize the effect of lower levels, where the organization effects of shear are thought to be strongest, the profiles above 500 hPa are multiplied by 14. Principal component analysis is used to truncate the number of dimensions of the profiles to seven (which explains 90 % of the variance), and the truncated profiles are clustered using a K-means clustering algorithm. The median of each cluster defines a representative wind profile (RWP). Each cluster contains information from thousands of wind profiles with different locations, times and 850 hPa wind directions. To summarize the clusters statistically, we interpret the RWPs as pseudo-wind profiles and display the geographic frequency, seasonal frequency and histograms of wind direction at 850 hPa for each cluster. Geographic patterns are evident, and certain features of the spatio-temporal distributions are matched to observed distributions of convective organization. The form of the RWPs is also matched to specific wind profiles from case studies of organized convection. By performing the analysis on climate-model output, we lay the foundations for the development of the representation of shear-induced organization in a convection parametrization scheme (CPS). This would use the same methodology to diagnose where the organization of convection occurs and modify the CPS in an appropriate manner to represent it. The procedure could also be used as a diagnostic tool for evaluating and comparing climate models.

A subspace-based form of background subtraction is presented and applied to aeroacoustic wind tunnel data. A variant of this method has seen use in other fields such as climatology and medical imaging. The technique is based on an eigenvalue decomposition of the background noise cross-spectral matrix. Simulated results indicate similar performance to conventional background subtraction when the subtracted spectra are weaker than the true contaminating background levels. Superior performance is observed when the subtracted spectra are stronger than the true contaminating background levels, and when background data do not match between measurements. Experimental results show limited success in recovering signal behavior for data in which conventional background subtraction fails. The results also demonstrate the subspace subtraction technique’s ability to maintain a physical coherence relationship in the modified cross-spectral matrix. Deconvolution results from microphone phased array data indicate that array integration methods are largely insensitive to subtraction type, and that background subtraction with appropriate background data is an effective alternative to diagonal removal.

Abstract. TempestExtremes (TE) is a multifaceted framework for feature detection, tracking, and scientific analysis of regional or global Earth system datasets on either rectilinear or unstructured/native grids. Version 2.1 of the TE framework now provides extensive support for examining both nodal (i.e., pointwise) and areal features, including tropical and extratropical cyclones, monsoonal lows and depressions, atmospheric rivers, atmospheric blocking, precipitation clusters, and heat waves. Available operations include nodal and areal thresholding, calculations of quantities related to nodal features such as accumulated cyclone energy and azimuthal wind profiles, filtering data based on the characteristics of nodal features, and stereographic compositing. This paper describes the core algorithms (kernels) that have been added to the TE framework since version 1.0, including algorithms for editing pointwise trajectory files, composition of fields around nodal features, generation of areal masks via thresholding and nodal features, and tracking of areal features in time. Several examples are provided of how these kernels can be combined to produce composite algorithms for evaluating and understanding common atmospheric features and their underlying processes. These examples include analyzing the fraction of precipitation from tropical cyclones, compositing meteorological fields around extratropical cyclones, calculating fractional contribution to poleward vapor transport from atmospheric rivers, and building a climatology of atmospheric blocks.

Abstract. The nonlinear dependence of the dust saltation process on wind speed poses a challenge for models of varying resolutions. This challenge is of particular relevance for the next generation of chemical transport models with nimble capability for multiple resolutions. We develop and apply a method to harmonize dust emissions across simulations of different resolutions by generating offline grid-independent dust emissions driven by native high-resolution meteorological fields. We implement into the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model a high-resolution dust source function to generate updated offline dust emissions. These updated offline dust emissions based on high-resolution meteorological fields strengthen dust emissions over relatively weak dust source regions, such as in southern South America, southern Africa and the southwestern United States. Identification of an appropriate dust emission strength is facilitated by the resolution independence of offline emissions. We find that the performance of simulated aerosol optical depth (AOD) versus measurements from the AERONET network and satellite remote sensing improves significantly when using the updated offline dust emissions with the total global annual dust emission strength of 2000 Tg yr−1 rather than the standard online emissions in GEOS-Chem. The updated simulation also better represents in situ measurements from a global climatology. The offline high-resolution dust emissions are easily implemented in chemical transport models. The source code and global offline high-resolution dust emission inventory are publicly available.

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Cordeirópolis é uma cidade com aproximadamente 20.000, localizada em meio a Depressão Periférica Paulista, uma das regiões com umidade relativa do ar mais baixas do estado de São Paulo durante a estação de inverno. Por outro lado, a cidade também conta com uma série de problemas socioambientais, como a exploração indiscriminada dos recursos naturais e os baixos níveis educacionais apresentados pela população local, colocando em risco a qualidade de vida dos habitantes. Diante dos fatos, buscou-se estabelecer relações entre os diferentes tipos de tempo atmosférico e as doenças cardiorrespiratórias, considerando que as variações do tempo atmosférico tendem a desencadear uma série de reações no organismo humano, causando ou agravando um emaranhado de sintomas, enfermidades e mudanças no quadro clínico de saúde da população. Também foi possível identificar os grupos de risco e mapear as áreas mais vulneráveis e o local de residência dos pacientes portadores de enfermidades ligadas ao sistema circulatório e respiratório atendidos pelo Programa Saúde da Família, servindo de contribuição para que o poder público possa pensar novas diretrizes que sejam ecologicamente, social e economicamente mais viáveis e justas
Cordeirópolis is a small town with approximately 20,000 inhabitants and is located in the midst of the Depressão Periférica Paulista, one of the driest regions of the state of São Paulo during the winter season. On the other hand, the city is among the largest and most important deposits of clay, which explains its economic vocation, aimed mainly to the production of ceramic artifacts and agriculture of sugar cane. Despite being part of the largest ceramic center in Latin America,and although the ceramic industries as well as the sugar industry are the main sources of income of the municipality, the city has a number of socio-environmental problems, such as the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and low levels of education provided by the local population, threatening the quality of life for residents. Given the above facts, we sought to establish relationships between different types of weather and cardiopulmonary diseases, considering that variations in the weather tend to trigger a series of reactions in the human body, causing or exacerbating a tangle of symptoms, diseases changes in clinical and population health. By the way, were collected, processed and organized weather data on precipitation, temperature, relative humidity and air quality standard, and was then correlated with the information collected by the Hospital Health System (SIH-SUS), referring to the monthly number of patients hospitalized for some kind of cardiopulmonary disease. Through the questionnaires it was possible to identify risk groups and map the area’s most vulnerable and place of residence of patients with diseases related to circulatory and respiratory system served by the Family Health Program, serving as a contribution to the local government can think of new guidelines that are environmentally, socially and economically more viable and fair

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.
Title from title screen. Susan Walcott, Paul Knapp, committee co-chairs; John Allensworth, committee member. Electronic text (106 p. : col. ill., col. maps) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 9, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-106).

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
Esta pesquisa, realizada no campo da Geografia Médica, tem como objetivo estabelecer interface entre o clima e a saúde. Nessa ótica, buscou-se analisar a variabilidade dos elementos climáticos nas ocorrências de casos de internação por pneumonia, relacionando-os com os fatores de risco dos grupos dos pacientes e riscos socioeconômicos da população em estudo. Tomou-se a cidade de Rio Claro como exemplo de caso, para estimar a associação existente entre os totais diários de internação por pneumonia, obtidos pelo Sistema de Informação Hospitalar (AIH/SUS), e os dados meteorológicos (temperatura, precipitação e umidade), obtidos junto a Estação Metereológica do Centro de Análise e Planejamento Ambiental (CEAPLA) e pelo Laboratório de Análise Metereológica e Climatologia Aplicada da UNESP-campus de Rio Claro-SP no período compreendido entre janeiro de 2000 e dezembro de 2009. Foi evidenciado que o número de ocorrência de internação por pneumonia sofreu acréscimo durante os meses de outono e inverno, época em que foram registradas baixas temperaturas e período de estiagem. Com relação à distribuição espacial, verificou-se que as áreas de concentração de domicílios dos pacientes se localizaram na zona central, onde há uma grande concentração de pessoas e a frota de veículos é mais numerosa, gerando mais poluentes na atmosfera, e nos bairros periféricos, onde as moradias têm menor qualidade de acabamento e a população se torna mais vulnerável. Pelas evidências, foi possível concluir que as condições climáticas têm influência sobre a morbidade respiratória
This research made in Medical Geography field aims to establish an interface between climate and health. In this viewpoint, the climatic factor variability had been analyzed on the hospital stay for pneumonia, correlating with the risk factors of risk patient groups and the population`s socioeconomic study. The city of Rio Claro, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, had been taken as the geographical study place to estimate the linking between daily totals of hospital stay for pneumonia, got by the Hospital Information System (AIH/SUS), and the meteorological data – temperature, precipitation, moisture – which had been gotten from the Climatology Laboratory of Geography Department, Unesp (Sao Paulo University) – Rio Claro campus and Climatological Station to the Center of Analysis and Environmental Planning (CEAPLA), during the period between January 2000 and December 2009. The number of hospitalization for pneumonia had been increased during autumn and winter months due to the low temperature and dry periods which had been recorded. Related to special distribution, it had been shown that the patient housing area concentration had been located in the central area as well peripheral ones such as Mae Preta and Chervezon. In the central areas there as been a large concentration of people and a high number of vehicles which results in more pollutants in the atmosphere. Therefore, in the peripheral region houses have been presenting low housing finishing, becoming such population more vulnerable to this health problem. However, it is possible to conclude that the climate has influence on respiratory morbidity

Orientadores: Hilton Silveira Pinto, Jose Teixeira Filho
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Geociencia
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Resumo: Independente do conhecimento científico, a cultura popular, em qualquer parte do globo, associa as alterações do tempo meteorológico - chuva, umidade, temperatura, vento - com o comportamento da saúde humana. Estudos científicos têm sido realizados com o propósito de descobrir quais as reais relações entre os elementos meteorológicos ou climáticos e a ocorrência de doenças humanas de modo geral e, especificamente, dos aparelhos circulatório e respiratório. A metrópole de São Paulo vem apresentando alterações em suas condições climáticas locais devido às modificações nas características atmosféricas causadas pelo lançamento de poluentes, o aumento da temperatura e o impacto das precipitações que causam o crescimento do número de problemas, sobretudo de saúde pública. O presente trabalho avaliou de forma temporal e espacial, se os efeitos das condições micrometeorológicas e micro-climáticas da cidade de São Paulo interferem na saúde humana, utilizando técnicas estatísticas e de geoprocessamento. Foram analisados dados meteorológicos diários obtidos pela rede urbana de coleta pertencente a Somar Meteorologia e ao IAG/USP e dados de internações diárias de indivíduos com problemas respiratórios, mais especificamente com influenza (gripe) e pneumonia, obtidos na rede SUS. O período estudado foi de Janeiro de 2002 a Dezembro de 2005. Os estudos desenvolvidos para as condições atuais de clima poderão ser utilizados para simular cenários futuros de saúde humana nas grandes cidades em função do aquecimento global e podem auxiliar as políticas públicas urbanas e de saúde coletiva.
Abstract: Everywhere in the world, the popular culture associates the alterations in meteorological data - rain, wind, temperature, humidity - with the behavior of human health. Scientific studies have been conducted in the aim to relate the meteorology and climate to the occurrence of human diseases, specifically of the circulatory and respiratory systems. The Sao Paulo metropolis has shown changes in the meteorological conditions due to changes in atmospheric characteristics caused by the release of pollutants, which increased the impact of temperature and precipitation, inducing the number of issues, particularly in domain of a public health. This study evaluates the effects of micro-meteorological and micro-climate conditions into the human health, using statistic and geoprocessing techniques. The incidence of daily hospitalization of persons with respiratory problems, specifically with influenza (flu) and pneumonia, (obtained in the SUS network) has being relayed with variation in daily meteorological data (obtained by the IAG / USP). It was analyzed a period from January 2002 to December 2005. We are developing the models to simulate scenarios for human health in big cities in terms of global warming, which could help the planning and decisions of urban public policies and public health.
Mestrado
Mestre em Geografia

Orientador: Anderson L.H. Christofoletti
Banca: Sandra Elisa Contri Pitton
Banca: Thiago Salomão de Azevedo
Resumo: Cordeirópolis é uma cidade com aproximadamente 20.000, localizada em meio a Depressão Periférica Paulista, uma das regiões com umidade relativa do ar mais baixas do estado de São Paulo durante a estação de inverno. Por outro lado, a cidade também conta com uma série de problemas socioambientais, como a exploração indiscriminada dos recursos naturais e os baixos níveis educacionais apresentados pela população local, colocando em risco a qualidade de vida dos habitantes. Diante dos fatos, buscou-se estabelecer relações entre os diferentes tipos de tempo atmosférico e as doenças cardiorrespiratórias, considerando que as variações do tempo atmosférico tendem a desencadear uma série de reações no organismo humano, causando ou agravando um emaranhado de sintomas, enfermidades e mudanças no quadro clínico de saúde da população. Também foi possível identificar os grupos de risco e mapear as áreas mais vulneráveis e o local de residência dos pacientes portadores de enfermidades ligadas ao sistema circulatório e respiratório atendidos pelo Programa Saúde da Família, servindo de contribuição para que o poder público possa pensar novas diretrizes que sejam ecologicamente, social e economicamente mais viáveis e justas
Abstract: Cordeirópolis is a small town with approximately 20,000 inhabitants and is located in the midst of the Depressão Periférica Paulista, one of the driest regions of the state of São Paulo during the winter season. On the other hand, the city is among the largest and most important deposits of clay, which explains its economic vocation, aimed mainly to the production of ceramic artifacts and agriculture of sugar cane. Despite being part of the largest ceramic center in Latin America,and although the ceramic industries as well as the sugar industry are the main sources of income of the municipality, the city has a number of socio-environmental problems, such as the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and low levels of education provided by the local population, threatening the quality of life for residents. Given the above facts, we sought to establish relationships between different types of weather and cardiopulmonary diseases, considering that variations in the weather tend to trigger a series of reactions in the human body, causing or exacerbating a tangle of symptoms, diseases changes in clinical and population health. By the way, were collected, processed and organized weather data on precipitation, temperature, relative humidity and air quality standard, and was then correlated with the information collected by the Hospital Health System (SIH-SUS), referring to the monthly number of patients hospitalized for some kind of cardiopulmonary disease. Through the questionnaires it was possible to identify risk groups and map the area's most vulnerable and place of residence of patients with diseases related to circulatory and respiratory system served by the Family Health Program, serving as a contribution to the local government can think of new guidelines that are environmentally, socially and economically more viable and fair
Mestre

Orientador: Magda Adelaide Lombardo
Coorientador: Sandra Elisa Contri Pitton
Banca: José Bueno Conti
Banca: Ana Tereza Cáceres Cortez
Banca: Sílvia Aparecida Guarnieri Ortigoza
Banca: Tânia Maria de Campos Leite
Resumo: Esta pesquisa, realizada no campo da Geografia Médica, tem como objetivo estabelecer interface entre o clima e a saúde. Nessa ótica, buscou-se analisar a variabilidade dos elementos climáticos nas ocorrências de casos de internação por pneumonia, relacionando-os com os fatores de risco dos grupos dos pacientes e riscos socioeconômicos da população em estudo. Tomou-se a cidade de Rio Claro como exemplo de caso, para estimar a associação existente entre os totais diários de internação por pneumonia, obtidos pelo Sistema de Informação Hospitalar (AIH/SUS), e os dados meteorológicos (temperatura, precipitação e umidade), obtidos junto a Estação Metereológica do Centro de Análise e Planejamento Ambiental (CEAPLA) e pelo Laboratório de Análise Metereológica e Climatologia Aplicada da UNESP-campus de Rio Claro-SP no período compreendido entre janeiro de 2000 e dezembro de 2009. Foi evidenciado que o número de ocorrência de internação por pneumonia sofreu acréscimo durante os meses de outono e inverno, época em que foram registradas baixas temperaturas e período de estiagem. Com relação à distribuição espacial, verificou-se que as áreas de concentração de domicílios dos pacientes se localizaram na zona central, onde há uma grande concentração de pessoas e a frota de veículos é mais numerosa, gerando mais poluentes na atmosfera, e nos bairros periféricos, onde as moradias têm menor qualidade de acabamento e a população se torna mais vulnerável. Pelas evidências, foi possível concluir que as condições climáticas têm influência sobre a morbidade respiratória
Abstract: This research made in Medical Geography field aims to establish an interface between climate and health. In this viewpoint, the climatic factor variability had been analyzed on the hospital stay for pneumonia, correlating with the risk factors of risk patient groups and the population's socioeconomic study. The city of Rio Claro, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, had been taken as the geographical study place to estimate the linking between daily totals of hospital stay for pneumonia, got by the Hospital Information System (AIH/SUS), and the meteorological data - temperature, precipitation, moisture - which had been gotten from the Climatology Laboratory of Geography Department, Unesp (Sao Paulo University) - Rio Claro campus and Climatological Station to the Center of Analysis and Environmental Planning (CEAPLA), during the period between January 2000 and December 2009. The number of hospitalization for pneumonia had been increased during autumn and winter months due to the low temperature and dry periods which had been recorded. Related to special distribution, it had been shown that the patient housing area concentration had been located in the central area as well peripheral ones such as Mae Preta and Chervezon. In the central areas there as been a large concentration of people and a high number of vehicles which results in more pollutants in the atmosphere. Therefore, in the peripheral region houses have been presenting low housing finishing, becoming such population more vulnerable to this health problem. However, it is possible to conclude that the climate has influence on respiratory morbidity
Doutor

Background Climate variation has affected diverse physical and biological systems worldwide. Population health is one of the most important impacts of climate variation. Although the impact of climate variation on infectious diseases has been of significant concern recently, the relationship between climate variation and infectious diseases, including vector-borne diseases and enteric infections, needs greater clarification. Australia is grappling with developing politically acceptable responses to global warming. In China, few studies have been conducted to examine the effect of climate variation, including global warming, on population health. As residents of developing countries may suffer more from climate change compared with people living in more developed countries, this thesis has significance for both countries. Aims This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of climate variation on population health, and to provide scientific evidence for policy makers, researchers, public health practitioners and local communities in the development of public health strategies at an early stage, in order to prevent or reduce future risks associated with ongoing climate change. The objectives of this study include: (1) to quantify the association between climate variation and selected vectorborne diseases and enteric infections in different climatic regions in Australia and China; (2) to project the future burden of selected vector-borne diseases and enteric infections based on climate change scenarios in different climatic regions in Australia and China. Methods This ecological study has two components. The first uses time-series analyses to quantify the relationship between meteorological variables and infectious diseases, whereas the second projects the burden of selected infectious diseases using future climate and population scenarios. Temperate and subtropical climatic zones in both Australia and China were selected as the primary study areas, and a study of an Australian tropical region was also conducted. Study of Australia’s temperate zones was conducted in Adelaide, South Australia, as well as the Murray River region in that State. The study of China’s temperate zone was carried out in Jinan, Shandong Province. Subtropical studies were conducted in Baoan, Guangdong Province, China, and Brisbane in Queensland, whilst research for the tropics centred on Townsville, also in Queensland, Australia. The selected infectious diseases - one vector-borne disease and one enteric infection in each country - are Ross River Virus (RRV) infection and salmonellosis in Australia, and malaria and bacillary dysentery in China. Study periods vary from eight to sixteen years (depending upon the availability of data). Climate data, infectious disease surveillance data and demographic data were collected from local authorities. Data analyses conducted in the ecological studies include Spearman correlation analysis, time-series adjusted Poisson regression and the Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model with consideration of lag effects, seasonality, long-term trends, and autocorrelation, on a weekly or monthly basis depending on data availability, and Hockey Sticky model to detect potential threshold temperatures. In the burden of disease component, analyses include the calculation of an indicator of the burden of disease - Years Lost due to Disabilities (YLDs) - and use scenario-based models to project YLDs for the selected diseases in 2030 and 2050 in Australia and 2020 and 2050 in China respectively. The projections consider both different scenarios of projected temperature and future population change. Results Relationship between climate variation and selected infectious diseases In all the study regions in Australia, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, rainfall and humidity are all significantly related to the number of RRV infections, with lag effects varying from 0 to 3 months. Additionally, high tides in the two seaside regions with tropical (Townsville) or subtropical (Brisbane) climates, and river flow in the temperate region (Murray River region), are related to the number of cases without any lag effects. A potential 1°C increase in maximum or minimum temperature may cause 4%~23% extra cases of RRV infection in the temperate region, 5~8% in the subtropical region, and 6%~15% in the tropical region. Maximum temperature, minimum temperature, humidity and air pressure are significantly related to malaria cases in the temperate city Jinan and subtropical city Baoan in China, with a lag effect range of 0 to 1 month. An association between rainfall and malaria cases was not detected in either region. A potential 1°C increase in maximum or minimum temperature may lead to 4%~15% extra malaria cases in the temperate region, and 12%-18% in the tropical region in China. Maximum temperature, minimum temperature, rainfall and humidity are all significantly related to the number of salmonellosis cases in the three study cities in Australia, with lag effects varying from 0 to 1 month. A potential 1°C increase in maximum or minimum temperature may cause 6%~19% extra salmonellosis cases in the temperate region (Adelaide), 5%~10% in the subtropical region (Brisbane), and 4%~15% in the tropical region (Townsville). The thresholds for the effects of maximum and minimum temperatures are 20ºC and 12ºC respectively in Adelaide. No threshold temperatures are detected in Townsville and Brisbane. Maximum temperature, minimum temperature, humidity, air pressure and rainfall are significantly related to bacillary dysentery cases in the temperate city Jinan and subtropical city Baoan in China, with the lag effect range of 0 to 2 months. A potential 1°C increase in maximum or minimum temperature may cause 7%~15% extra bacillary dysentery cases in the temperate region and 10% ~ 19% in the subtropical region in China. The thresholds for the effects of maximum and minimum temperatures on bacillary dysentery are 17ºC and 8ºC respectively in Jinan. No threshold temperatures are detected in Baoan. Projection of YLDs from target diseases In Australia, considering both climatic and population scenarios, if other factors remain constant, compared with the YLDs observed in 2000, the YLDs for salmonellosis might increase by up to 48% by 2030, and nearly double by 2050 in South Australia, while the YLDs might double by 2030 and increase by up to 143% by 2050 in Brisbane, Queensland. The YLDs for RRV infection might increase by up to 66% by 2030, and nearly double by 2050 in South Australia. They might increase by up to 61% by 2030 and double by 2050 in Brisbane, Queensland. In China, considering both climatic and population scenarios, if other factors remain constant, compared with the YLDs observed in 2000, the YLDs for bacillary dysentery might double by 2020 and triple by 2050 in both Jinan and Baoan. The YLDs for malaria might increase by up to 108% by 2020 and nearly triple by 2050 in Jinan, the temperate city, and increase by up to 144% by 2020 and nearly triple by 2050 in Baoan, the subtropical city. Conclusions 1. Both maximum and minimum temperatures are important in the transmission of vector-borne diseases in various climatic regions in both Australia and China. River flow or high tides may also play an important role in the transmission of such diseases. 2. Both maximum and minimum temperatures play an important role in the transmission of enteric infections in various climatic regions in both Australia and China, with a threshold temperature detected in the temperate regions but not in subtropical and tropical regions. 3. The effects of rainfall and relative humidity on selected infectious diseases vary in different study areas in Australia and China. 4. The burden of temperature-related infectious diseases may greatly increase in the future if there is no effective preventive intervention. Public health implications 1. Implication for health practice • Public health practitioners, together with relevant government organisations, should monitor trends in infectious diseases, as well as other relevant indexes, such as vectors, pathogens, and water and food safety. They should advise policy makers of the potential risks associated with climate change and develop public health strategies to prevent and reduce the impact of infectious disease associated with such change. • Doctors and other clinical practitioners should be prepared and supported in the provision of health care for any expected extra cases associated with climate variation and should play an important role in relevant health education on climate change. • Community participation is of significance to adapt to and mitigate the risk of climate change on population health. Community involvement helps to deliver programmes which more accurately target local needs. Therefore, community should be involved in the partnerships of climate change as early as possible. • Relevant education programs on the potential health impact of climate change should be conducted by government at all levels for different stakeholders, including industries, governments, communities, clinicians and researchers. • Advocacy for adapting to and mitigating climate change should be a longstanding public health activity. 2. Implication for researchers • The main task for researchers is to identify the independent contribution made by key climatic variables and whether there are exposure thresholds for infectious disease transmission. Further studies should include various infectious diseases in different climatic regions. • Developing countries and rural regions are more vulnerable to the impact of climate change so more research should be conducted for people living in those regions. • Studies using summary measures that combine prevalence of disease, quality of life and life expectancy, such as Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), to assess the burden of disease due to climate change is necessary to assist in decision making. • More research should be conducted on the assessment of adaptive strategies and mitigation to future climate change. 3. Implication for policies • Public and preventive health strategies that consider local climatic conditions and their impact on vector and food borne diseases are important in reducing such impact due to climate change in the future. • The extra health burden that may be caused by future climate change may have a great impact on the currently overloaded public health system in both developed and developing countries. Long-term planning about health resource allocation, infrastructure establishment, and relevant response mechanisms should be developed at relevant government levels. • Effective prevention and intervention strategies will be possible only if the efforts of relevant sectors, including governments, communities, industries, research institutions, clinical professionals and individuals, have coordinated responses. • International and regional collaborations are necessary to address this global issue. In addition, strategies of an international dimension should be translated into regional and local actions. This is extremely important to developing countries such as China and India. • Sustainable development policies with consideration given to reducing green house gases and environmental degradation need immediate action which will benefit future generations. Health priorities should include the prevention of climate change.
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Thesis(Ph.D.)-- School of Population Health and Clinical Practice, 2007

Graphs and maps help you reason with data. They also help you communicate results. A good graph gives you the most information in the shortest time, with the least ink in the smallest space (Tufte, 1997). In this chapter, we show you how to make graphs and maps using R. A good strategy is to follow along with an open session, typing (or copying) the code as you read. Before you begin make sure you have the following data sets available in your workspace. Do this by typing . . . > SOI = read.table("SOI.txt", header=TRUE) > NAO = read.table("NAO.txt", header=TRUE) > SST = read.table("SST.txt", header=TRUE) > A = read.table("ATL.txt", header=TRUE) > US = read.table("H.txt", header=TRUE) . . . Not all the code is shown but all is available on our Web site. It is easy to make a graph. Here we provide guidance to help you make informative graphs. It is a tutorial on how to create publishable figures from your data. In R you have several choices. With the standard (base) graphics environment, you can produce a variety of plots with fine details. Most of the figures in this book use the standard graphics environment. The grid graphics environment is even more flexible. It allows you to design complex layouts with nested graphs where scaling is maintained upon resizing. The lattice and ggplot2 packages use grid graphics to create more specialized graphing functions and methods. The spplot function for example is plot method built with grid graphics that you will use to create maps. The ggplot2 package is an implementation of the grammar of graphics combining advantages from the standard and lattice graphic environments. It is worth the effort to learn. We begin with the standard graphics environment. A box plot is a graph of the five-number summary. The summary function applied to data produces the sample mean along with five other statistics including the minimum, the first quartile value, the median, the third quartile value, and the maximum. The box plot graphs these numbers. This is done using the boxplot function.

The debate over climate change, both from natural causes and human activity, is not new. Although the Baron C.-L. de Montesquieu is undoubtedly the best known Enlightenment thinker on the topic of climatic determinism, others, notably the Abbé Du Bos, David Hume, and Thomas Jefferson, observed that climatic changes exerted a direct influence on individuals and society and that human agency was directly involved in changing the climate. Climate—from the Greek term klima, meaning slope or inclination—was originally thought to depend only on the height of the Sun above the horizon, a function of the latitude. A second tradition, traceable to Aristotle, linked the quality of the air (and thus the climate) to the vapors and exhalations of a country. The Hippocratic tradition further linked climate to health and national character. As late as 1779, the Encyclopdédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert defined “climat” geographically, as a “portion or zone of the surface of the Earth, enclosed within two circles parallel to the equator,” in which the longest day of the year differs in length on its northern and southern boundaries by some quantity of time, for example one-half hour. The article goes on to mention Montesquieu’s position on “l’influence du climat sur les mœurs, le charactère, et les loix des peuples.” The second definition of climate provided by the Encyclopdédie was medical, identified primarily as the temperature of a region and explicated through its effects on the health and well-being of the inhabitants. The idea that climate influenced culture was derived in part from the writings of ancient and medieval philosophers, geographers, and historians, including the works of Hippocrates, Albertus Magnus, and Jean Bodin. With no established science of climatology, Enlightenment thinkers apprehended climate and its changes primarily in a literary way. They compared the ancient writings to recent weather conditions, linked the rise and fall of creative historical eras to changes in climate, and promoted a brand of climatic determinism based on geographic location and the quality of the air.