Wet Bulb Globe Temperature: Identifying Relationships with Morbidity and Determining the Impact of Microclimatic Variability on Estimates and Forecasts
Public Deposited- Creator
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Clark, Jordan
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geography
- Abstract
- Heat is the leading cause of weather-related fatalities and is a grave concern for occupational health and athletic safety. Wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) is a heat stress index that is becoming the gold standard for assessing heat stress as it accounts for the effects of air temperature, humidity, wind speed, and radiation on human body temperature. However, limited research has investigated the utility of WBGT in predicting morbidity at a population-level. Furthermore, WBGT varies widely across small distances and there has been limited validation of recent efforts to provide weather forecasts of WBGT. In this dissertation, emergency department visits from North Carolina (2007-2016) are used to assess relationships between heat and morbidity. Microclimatic variations in WBGT across small distances (10s to 100s of meters) are quantified using WBGT data collected from high school campuses and suburban environments during the summers of 2019-2021. With this data, the accuracy of a WBGT forecast tool (developed by NOAA’s Southeast Regional Climate Center and Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments) is evaluated and compared to a forecasting method operationalized in 2021 by the US National Weather Service. This work revealed WBGT to be a more robust predictor of morbidity than other metrics, such as the Heat Index, and supports previous research on the higher heat-health burden in rural areas relative to urban areas in North Carolina. Large variations in WBGT were found across a variety of surfaces and weather conditions. These variations on warm sunny days often result in different levels of danger across the same high school campus, such as between tennis courts and adjacent grassy fields. Lastly, the WBGT forecast was found to be within 1.5°F of observed WBGT on average and more accurate than other methods which had notable cold biases. Furthermore, incorporating high-resolution, sub-forecast grid level data to account for the influence of land cover on wind speed improved the forecast, particularly for more sheltered areas. These findings support the use of WBGT in heat-health warning systems, inform considerations when measuring the index, and demonstrate that WBGT can be accurately forecast to enable early warning of particularly hazardous periods.
- Date of publication
- 2023
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
- Advisor
- Konrad, Charles E
- Konrad, Charles E
- Wise, Erika
- Song, Conghe
- Grundstein, Andrew
- Rayne, Sandra
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2023
- Language
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