16:30 〜 16:45
[AOS14-10] Climate link to heatwaves over Japan
Heatwaves are causing huge societal impacts through their impacts on human health and socio-economic conditions. Global warming and the "heat island effect," besides other factors like rapid urbanization and changes in the environment, are linked to the frequent occurrence of intense heatwaves in many parts of the world. Heatwaves are frequently associated with synoptic-scale meteorological conditions such as a blocking high, which has limited predictability at a longer lead time. As a result, we attempted to find a link between the number of heatwave-related cases in Japan and climate variations in this study. The numbers of heatstroke patients transported by ambulance in Tokyo and Kyoto are used in the analyses. It is found that the known modes of climate variation, such as the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), have statistically significant correlations with the July and September cases. Other climate links are explored by correlating ambulance cases with the sea surface temperature anomalies of the global ocean.