This session will feature public health professionals and collaborators who are on the front lines of addressing climate challenges in Phoenix, Arizona, and the American Southwest. Speakers will provide examples of local and regional initiatives that address short- and long-term health effects associated with extreme events and chronic hazards including heat, drought, flooding, and dust.

Human exposure to thermal extremes in concert with other vulnerability factors increases the risk of negative human health outcomes ranging from reduced labor productivity to death. Human biometeorology focuses on these complex interactions between weather and human health. This session solicits presentations on advances in scientific understanding and modeling of human health consequences and their causes linked to thermal extremes (such as heat waves and cold waves). We encourage abstracts focused on a mechanistic understanding of the pathways leading to such health outcomes as well as investigations into targeted interventions which may demonstrably reduce risk when implemented. We encourage consideration of both slow-evolving heat risk and adaptation as well as short-term heat risk and interventions. This session will begin with a Core Science Keynote that describes human biometeorology in extreme heat/cold environments and the spectrum of health impacts globally. The session is sponsored by the International Society of Biometeorology.

Weather and climate act as important drivers of public health outcomes and pose both a risk to disease control strategies and an opportunity to anticipate and reduce negative impacts. We solicit talks on the use of weather and climate information in health early-warning systems from weather to seasonal time scales, including lessons learned and challenges in the translation of research to operations.

The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the U.S. Global Change Research Program deliver a report to Congress no less than every 4 years that integrates, evaluates, and interprets global change science and the effects of global change on human and natural systems in the United States. The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) fulfills that mandate in two volumes, the first of which, the Climate Science Special Report, was released in November 2017.

Volume II, Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States, is expected to be released in late 2018. Drawing on the physical science described in Vol. I, this assessment focuses on the ecological, societal, and economic aspects of climate change and variability for 10 regions and 17 national topics. Particular attention is given to observed and projected risks and impacts, with additional chapters on adaptation and reducing risks through emissions mitigation. Throughout its regional and national topic chapters, NCA4 Vol. II provides examples of actions underway in communities across the United States to reduce the risks associated with climate change, increase resilience, and improve livelihoods. NCA4 Vol. II has an increased focus on regional information and includes a new standalone chapter addressing the U.S. Caribbean. In addition, the report includes new chapters on air quality, climate effects on U.S. international interests, complex systems and multiple stressors, and an international appendix that looks at national assessments around the world.

NCA4 Vol. II was developed by more than 300 authors from across the country representing many different disciplines and region-specific expertise. The assessment is written for a broad audience, and is intended to help inform decision-makers, resource managers, planners, and all who are interested in better understanding the effects of climate change on the United States.

This session will highlight the findings of NCA4 Vol. II, related tools and initiatives, and examples of how climate assessments may be used to inform resilience planning and adaptation. Presentations will also explore new approaches to assessment and showcase new tools to assist in the assessment and decision support processes.

Over the last century, droughts have caused more deaths internationally than any other weather-related disaster (floods, hurricanes, etc.). Droughts in the United States, however, are not generally thought of as public health threats, even though there are known associations between droughts and negative health outcomes. The often slow onset of drought, compared to other extreme events, makes it difficult to identify the direct linkages between the physical characteristics of drought and societal impacts, as well as impacts that occur after a drought has ended. Recent extreme droughts in the United States caused significant human health outcomes, including decreased water quantity and quality across small water systems, coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) outbreaks in the southwestern United States, increased mortality rates associated with drought, and adverse mental health outcomes as livelihoods are challenged.

By understanding linkages between droughts and human health, we can properly prepare our public health agencies for the health impacts associated with droughts, which, in turn, can reduce health risks and save lives. We seek abstract submissions that investigate the linkages between the physical drivers of drought to the impacts on human health. We encourage submissions to not only be related research, but also applications, such as by public health officials, of such knowledge to reduce health impacts, as well as research that connects to other related climate hazards (such as heat waves and wildfires) connected to public health.

During the past year, there has been increasing interest in and open discussions about the subject of the emotional and mental health of meteorologists. This discussion has included several firsthand accounts from experts in the Weather Enterprise, including Ginger Zee's book focusing on her personal battle with depression and an AMS presentation by Christina Crowe about the impact of disasters on meteorologists. Others have highlighted these issues in podcasts, like those called "In the Elements"; new research proposals to study the prevalence of stress-related issues; and the development of training to help personnel deal with stress. This panel will highlight research and internal observations on issues critical incident stress and PTSD among the forecasting community and partners in emergency management.

This session invites presentations addressing aerosols, natural and anthropogenic, such as aeroallergens/pollen, dust, fly ash, and other particulate matter (PM) linked to health consequences including asthma cardiovascular health, skin and eye conditions, and the transmission of infectious disease. Studies addressing the interactions between aerosol exposures and human health; investigating changes to global aerosol production, variability, tracking, and forecasting; and those involving novel research methods (clinical, laboratory, epidemiological) are encouraged.

Extreme heat and heat waves are often understood as meteorological events conceptually and practically distinct from dramatic weather disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods. This differentiation may be due to the decorous behavior of heat as a hazard; in most cases, heat does not cause visible infrastructure damage, destroy housing, or invoke costly recovery efforts. Yet extreme heat is one of the leading meteorological causes of morbidity and mortality in post-industrial countries, with death tolls far greater than most other meteorological disasters combined. This session will examine the circumstances under which extreme heat events rise to the level of a ‘disaster’, and the political and policy implications of using ‘disaster’ as a label. We invite presentations discussing the underexamined role of co-occurring hazards in creating large-scale heat emergencies, including technological failures (e.g., power outage, water contamination) and multi-hazard events (e.g., extreme heat following hurricanes or during long-term drought.)  We also aim to showcase work exploring how social, physical, and economic conditions, including social isolation, poverty, and even the built environment, can amplify the effects of extreme heat from meteorological reality to human disaster.

This session will highlight initial analyses and the assessments of the health impacts from the devastating hurricane season of 2017, with a focus on interactions between healthcare and municipal infrastructure, housing and human and animal health.  Immediate and delayed impacts, cascading power failure and heat waves, infectious and chronic diseases, loss of access to care and exposure to harmful chemicals and pathogens are all relevant subjects.  Talks highlighting innovative ways of obtaining data or implementing solutions are most welcome.

This session will focus on the links between extreme weather events and climate anomalies and infectious disease ecology, including vectorborne, waterborne, and foodborne transmission. Presentations implementing short-, medium-, and long-term forecasting methods or data to identify weather- and climate-mediated changes in infectious disease transmission risk are encouraged, as are studies that illustrate the complex nature of infectious disease transmission following weather events including hurricanes, floods, and the role of community resilience and adaptation as mediators.

Over the past few decades, the Phoenix metropolitan area has become the center stage for sustainability research related to urban heat islands, drought, and other challenges facing desert climates. Situated in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix’s extreme climate and rapid urbanization patterns have rendered the metropolitan area a perfect testbed to investigate extreme events and evaluate various hazard mitigation strategies through real world, solutions-oriented research.

The 21st century has already brought numerous weather extremes to Phoenix, ranging from 120 degree Fahrenheit temperatures to record flooding. Recognizing that Phoenix conditions could become the new normal in other parts of the world, this region has long embraced its sandbox role. City officials and researchers are actively seeking to understand the processes for these hazards, their impacts on urban infrastructure, and how they affect the population to increase urban resilience, especially among the vulnerable and underrepresented groups (low-income, elderly, native peoples, etc.).

The study of extreme events in light of cascading negative effects as well as feedback loops within weather hazards requires interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration. We welcome contributions that address extreme heat, drought, flooding, monsoonal weather patterns, and wildfires as they impact urban infrastructure, transportation, design and planning, risk perception, the energy-food-water nexus, and livability of cities.

Presentations are particularly encouraged from researchers studying Phoenix, but we also welcome presentations from research teams studying other desert cities (e.g., Dubai, Israel, Kuwait, Sydney, Melbourne).

Novel applications of satellite data are advancing the fields of public health, air quality, and environmental management, as well as increasing the impact of public outreach and partnerships between scientists and public stakeholders throughout the globe. While NASA satellite data and tools are freely available and accessible via the web, the full, transformative possibilities of satellites have been limited due to potential users’ lack of knowledge regarding data access and utility. This interdisciplinary panel will curate and discuss a wide suite of data and products from satellites, including TEMPO, MAIA, TROPOMI, SENTINAL 4, GEMS, AQUA, and TERRA. We will discuss both historical uses of  satellite data and its potential for use in applications designed to further the aims of public health, air quality, and environmental groups (including those focused on environmental justice). Finally, the panel will share strategies for engaging the public.

Recent boreal and austral wildfire seasons have exhibited an apparent graduation toward new extremes in wildfire behavior, explosive pyroconvection, and hemisphere-scale smoke plumes.  For instance, a wildfire complex in British Columbia, Canada, erupted into at least seven pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) storms during August 2017, generating a stratospheric smoke plume unprecedented in the satellite era (post 1978). High-altitude smoke from this event was observed over the Arctic, as well as most of Europe and northern Asia.  Observations across the entire Northern Hemisphere revealed plume concentration, mass burden, and optical/physical properties unprecedented at stratospheric altitudes in the absence of a major volcanic eruption. In an apparent first for western Europe, fatality-causing wildfires in Portugal exploded into pyroCb during June and October 2017. In January 2018, the first pyroCb ever detected in South America exploded from a prescribed fire in Argentina. Our motive for this session is to discuss and assess the impacts of these and other extreme fire events on communities, weather, and climate.  Contributions to this session can focus on the details of specific events or upper-atmospheric smoke plumes in general. Several important science questions will be addressed: the observational gaps exposed by these unprecedented events, the nature and expected frequency of the fuel/fire/plume dynamics leading to pyroCb plumes in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, the hemispheric atmospheric impact, and our modeling/predictive capability. We solicit papers on remote sensing (active and passive), in situ measurements, and modeling.

Health providers and researchers need environmental data to study and understand the geographic, environmental, and meteorological differences in how extreme events affect disease. Satellite remote sensing of the environment offers a unique vantage point that can fill in the gaps of environmental, spatial, and temporal data for tracking disease. This presentation will demonstrate NASA’s applied science programs efforts to transition from research to operations to benefit society.

Satellite Earth observations present a unique vantage point of the Earth's environment from space, which offers a wealth of health applications for the imaginative investigator. The presentation is directly related to Earth Observing Systems and Global Health Surveillance and will present research results of the remote sensing environmental observations of Earth and health applications, which can contribute to the health research.

As part of NASA's approach and methodology, they have used Earth Observation Systems and Applications for Health Models to provide a method for bridging gaps of environmental, spatial, and temporal data for tracking disease.

 

This presentation will provide a venue to present results of both research and practice using satellite Earth observations to study weather and its role in health research and the transition to operational end users.

This session invites presentations on the economic valuation and assessment of the impact of weather and climate extremes on health as well as cost-effectiveness analysis of interventions to reduce said impacts. We invite presentations that consider the cost to healthcare systems of extremes, health insurance considerations associated with extremes, analyses of avoided costs (damage costs avoided), quantification of human health costs, and other health economics associated with weather and climate such as Value of Information (VoI) studies.