On the association between high outdoor thermo-hygrometric comfort index and severe ground-level ozone: A first investigation.

According to the European Environment Agency, the year 2015 was the warmest on record to that point, with a series of heat waves from May to September resulted in high levels of tropospheric ozone. The implications of such a year on the human well-being and health are therefore of multiple nature and can be quantified referring to the exceedances of the corresponding thresholds. This work focused on the analysis of the May-September period of 2015 in the city of Milan (Italy) in terms of Mediterranean Outdoor Comfort Index (MOCI) and ozone concentrations, recorded by monitoring stations and modeled through the Weather Research and Forecasting model. Main findings show that thermo-hygrometric stress events (periods of at least six consecutive days characterized by daily maximum values of the MOCI higher than 0.5) are characterized by daily ozone higher than the guideline level of the World Health Organization (equal to 100 µgm-3). This means that thermo-hygrometric stress conditions are added up to poor air quality conditions, with severe risks for human health. Moreover, a daily MOCI-daily ozone correlation coefficient equal to 0.6 was found for the whole period. The degree of correspondence between ozone events (defined according to the European Air Quality Directive) and MOCI events was also investigated pointing out that 86% and 95% of days during ozone events are correctly predicted by events of recorded and modeled MOCI respectively, with a corresponding false alarm rate of 3% and 9%.

Outdoor thermal perception and comfort conditions in the Köppen-Geiger climate category BSk. One-year field survey and measurement campaign in Konya, Turkey.

This study presents an analysis of the thermo-hygrometric conditions in the city of Konya (Turkey). A one-year transversal field survey was carried out in the Selçuk University campus and 2295 valid questionnaires were collected. In each questionnaire, randomly selected interviewees provided personal information and judged their perception and thermal preference according to the ASHRAE 7-point and McIntyre scales, respectively. For each interviewee, a value of the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) was calculated based on the values of operational variables obtained from the questionnaires and the environmental variables measured during the survey. This allowed to calculate the seasonal preferred and neutral PETs and the annual PET comfort range. Also, the scale of the PET thermal perception was determined for the Konya population and, more generally, for the inhabitants of the BSk Köppen-Geiger climate zone. Statistical analyzes carried out in terms of Variance Inflationary Factor, multicollinearity assessment and Best Subsets Analysis led to the identification of the Turkish Outdoor Comfort Index, an empirical index able to predict the average value of the thermal perception of a large group of individuals living in the aforementioned climate zone. Moreover, the equations of the Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) were obtained for each season.

Defining ecological regions in Italy based on a multivariate clustering approach: A first step towards a targeted vector borne disease surveillance.

Ecoregionalization is the process by which a territory is classified in similar areas according to specific environmental and climatic factors. The climate and the environment strongly influence the presence and distribution of vectors responsible for significant human and animal diseases worldwide. In this paper, we developed a map of the eco-climatic regions of Italy adopting a data-driven spatial clustering approach using recent and detailed spatial data on climatic and environmental factors. We selected seven variables, relevant for a broad set of human and animal vector-borne diseases (VBDs): standard deviation of altitude, mean daytime land surface temperature, mean amplitude and peak timing of the annual cycle of land surface temperature, mean and amplitude of the annual cycle of greenness value, and daily mean amount of rainfall. Principal Component Analysis followed by multivariate geographic clustering using the k-medoids technique were used to group the pixels with similar characteristics into different ecoregions, and at different spatial resolutions (250 m, 1 km and 2 km). We showed that the spatial structure of ecoregions is generally maintained at different spatial resolutions and we compared the resulting ecoregion maps with two datasets related to Bluetongue vectors and West Nile Disease (WND) outbreaks in Italy. The known characteristics of Culicoides imicola habitat were well captured by 2/22 specific ecoregions (at 250 m resolution). Culicoides obsoletus/scoticus occupy all sampled ecoregions, according to its known widespread distribution across the peninsula. WND outbreak locations strongly cluster in 4/22 ecoregions, dominated by human influenced landscape, with intense cultivations and complex irrigation network. This approach could be a supportive tool in case of VBDs, defining pixel-based areas that are conducive environment for VBD spread, indicating where surveillance and prevention measures could be prioritized in Italy. Also, ecoregions suitable to specific VBDs vectors could inform entomological surveillance strategies.