Speaker
Description
The Mediterranean coast is warming at a rate 25% faster than the global average and 40% faster during the summer. This rapid climate change has heightened risks of food insecurity and heat exposure for local populations. These risks are further intensified by another major transition: urbanization. Since 1960, the Mediterranean and North Africa have seen their populations quadruple and their urbanization rates double, while hosting nearly one-third of all international tourists. With 40% of the coastline already covered by man-made structures and the intensification of heat island effects, pressures from urbanization on human health are expected to grow, particularly in secondary cities still facing infrastructure deficits.
More urgent than the average warming for public health is exposure to extreme heat. Common heat metrics in climate science, such as maximum temperature, are not strongly associated with physiological processes and health risks. Instead, duration of heat exposure (e.g., sustained temperatures higher than 30 degrees) has a stronger association with hospital admission rates. Climate acclimatization further complicates the definition of extreme heat, as thresholds may vary based on local historical temperature norms. Some epidemiological studies address this by using local anomalies, such as defining extreme heat as temperatures exceeding the 90th percentile of historical records. Exposure to heat also differs from station-observed temperatures, as the temperatures individuals are exposed to—often indoors—may be mitigated by air conditioning or fans. These factors pose challenges for urban remote sensing in accurately estimating heat exposure at the individual level. However, at a large scale, particularly in the Global South, remote sensing can be useful in identifying gaps in electrical infrastructure and power outages, and thus signal areas with amplified climate risks to human health.
In this study, we characterize, map, and quantify urban land and infrastructure changes by combining daytime and nighttime satellite data from 2012 to 2022. We then assess how these changes amplify heat exposure risks across the region by country. Our findings reveal that while countries in both Southern Europe and Northern Africa are experiencing increased urban areas exposed to prolonged extreme heat, African countries such as Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia emerge as hotspots of urbanization with rising temperatures and inadequate infrastructure. These results underscore urgent issues in adapting to extreme heat and addressing resource shortages in these rapidly urbanizing cities.
| Keywords | Infrastructure gap, heat exposure, Mediterranean, remote sensing, urbanization |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
