The Application of the European Heat Wave of 2003 to Korean Cities to Analyze Impacts on Heat-Related Mortality

The goal of this research is to transpose the unprecedented 2003 European excessive heat event to six Korean cities and to develop meteorological analogs for each. Since this heat episode is not a model but an actual event, we can use a plausible analog to assess the risk of increasing heat on these cities instead of an analog that is dependent on general circulation (GCM) modeling or the development of arbitrary scenarios. Initially, the meteorological conditions from Paris are characterized statistically and these characteristics are transferred to the Korean cites. Next, the new meteorological dataset for each Korean city is converted into a daily air mass calendar. We can then determine the frequency and character of “offensive” air masses in the Korean cities that are historically associated with elevated heat-related mortality. One unexpected result is the comparative severity of the very hot summer of 1994 in Korea, which actually eclipsed the 2003 analog. The persistence of the offensive air masses is considerably greater for the summer of 1994, as were dewpoint temperatures for a majority of the Korean cities. For all the Korean cities but one, the summer of 1994 is associated with more heat-related deaths than the analog summer, in some cases a sixfold increase over deaths in an average summer. The Korean cities appear less sensitive to heat-related mortality problems during very hot summers than do large eastern and midwestern U.S. cities, possibly due to a lesser summer climate variation and efficient social services available during extreme heat episodes.