The Climate and Health Monitor and Outlook—Integrated Information to Manage Heat’s Health Impacts

Extreme heat is a growing global problem. Observational records from NOAA show that most places on earth have been getting hotter over the past several decades, while climate projections from sources such as the National Climate Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that this trend is likely to continue for some time - even if strong mitigative actions are taken. Counties, cities, and states are taking action, developing Heat Action Plans and Heat Early Warning systems, but these systems often only activate once a heat watch or warning has been issued, leaving little lead time to take action.

As Subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) prediction capabilities have been gradually improving due to global investment in better observing, understanding, modeling, and computational capabilities, a new opportunity to provide predictions weeks to months in advance is emerging. However, this information is new and unfamiliar, and is provided in a format which may be difficult to understand for some users. As a result it has not been meaningfully incorporated into Heat Action Plans or Heat Early Warning Systems – nor have they been used in other heat risk mitigation contexts by decision makers in public health, emergency management, or city planning.

Beginning in 2019, a new project under the auspices of the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) and coordinated by the US Global Change Research Program is underway to improve the utility of S2S information for heat health risk management. The Climate and Health Monitor and Outlook (CHMO) is a multifaceted, experimental, interpretive product which is built upon existing information provided by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. The monitor provides an integrated view of the past week’s temperatures from NOAA along with incidence of Heat Stress Illness reported by the National Syndromic Surveillance Platform (NSSP) from CDC. The outlook provides a seasonal view of the predicted temperature anomalies from NOAA as well as health interpretations from an interagency set of health experts convened by the USGCRP’s Interagency Crosscutting Group on Climate Change and Human Health (CCHHG).

This presentation provides a brief background on the development of this experimental product, demonstration of the product, and an invitation for others to be involved in the process of prototyping and localizing the information further.