1. Adapting to Changing Labor Productivity as a Result of Intensified Heat Stress in a Changing Climate
- Author
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Jinxin Zhu, Dagang Wang, Shuo Wang, and Boen Zhang
- Subjects
labor productivity ,Epidemiology ,adaptation ,Biogeosciences ,Volcanic Effects ,heat stress ,Global Change from Geodesy ,Volcanic Hazards and Risks ,Oceans ,Sea Level Change ,Stochastic Phenomena ,Disaster Risk Analysis and Assessment ,Waste Management and Disposal ,Water Science and Technology ,Global and Planetary Change ,Climate and Interannual Variability ,Overtime ,Subsidy ,Pollution ,Climate Impact ,Earthquake Ground Motions and Engineering Seismology ,Explosive Volcanism ,Earth System Modeling ,Atmospheric Processes ,Probability Distributions, Heavy and Fat‐tailed ,Ocean Monitoring with Geodetic Techniques ,Ocean/Atmosphere Interactions ,Mathematical Geophysics ,Atmospheric ,Regional Modeling ,Downscaling ,Atmospheric Effects ,Volcanology ,Temporal Analysis and Representation ,Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law ,Hydrological Cycles and Budgets ,Decadal Ocean Variability ,Land/Atmosphere Interactions ,Extreme Events ,TD169-171.8 ,Geodesy and Gravity ,Global Change ,Time Series Analysis ,Air/Sea Interactions ,Numerical Modeling ,Solid Earth ,Geological ,Ocean/Earth/atmosphere/hydrosphere/cryosphere interactions ,Water Cycles ,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health ,Modeling ,Avalanches ,Volcano Seismology ,Benefit‐cost Analysis ,Space Plasma Physics ,Computational Geophysics ,Regional Climate Change ,Scaling: Spatial and Temporal ,Natural Hazards ,Abrupt/Rapid Climate Change ,Informatics ,Natural resource economics ,Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis ,Surface Waves and Tides ,Atmospheric Composition and Structure ,Time Series Experiments ,Environmental protection ,dynamical downscaling ,Volcano Monitoring ,uncertainty ,Seismology ,Climatology ,Nonlinear Geophysics ,Radio Oceanography ,Gravity and Isostasy ,Marine Geology and Geophysics ,Physical Modeling ,Oceanography: General ,Air conditioning ,Cryosphere ,Impacts of Global Change ,Oceanography: Physical ,Research Article ,Risk ,Persistence, Memory, Correlations, Clustering ,Oceanic ,Theoretical Modeling ,Climate change ,Radio Science ,Tsunamis and Storm Surges ,Paleoceanography ,Climate Dynamics ,Productivity ,Numerical Solutions ,Sustainable development ,Climate Change and Variability ,Stochastic Processes ,Effusive Volcanism ,business.industry ,Climate Variability ,General Circulation ,Policy Sciences ,Climate Impacts ,Mud Volcanism ,Air/Sea Constituent Fluxes ,Mass Balance ,interval programming model ,Ocean influence of Earth rotation ,Volcano/Climate Interactions ,Environmental science ,Climate model ,Hydrology ,business ,Sea Level: Variations and Mean - Abstract
The intensification of heat stress reduces the labor capacity and hence poses a threat to socio‐economic development. The reliable projection of the changing climate and the development of sound adaptation strategies are thus desired for adapting to the decreasing labor productivity under climate change. In this study, an optimization modeling approach coupled with dynamical downscaling is proposed to design the optimal adaptation strategies for improving labor productivity under heat stress in China. The future changes in heat stress represented by the wet‐bulb globe temperature (WBGT) are projected with a spatial resolution of 25 × 25 km by a regional climate model (RCM) through the dynamical downscaling of its driving global climate model (GCM). Uncertain information such as system costs, environmental costs, and subsidies are also incorporated into the optimization process to provide reliable decision alternatives for improving labor productivity. Results indicate that the intensification of WBGT is overestimated by the GCM compared to the RCM. Such an overestimation can lead to more losses in working hours derived from the GCM than those from the RCM regardless of climate scenarios. Nevertheless, the overestimated heat stress does not alter the regional measures taken to adapt to decreasing labor productivity. Compared to inland regions, the monsoon‐affected regions tend to improve labor productivity by applying air conditioning rather than working overtime due to the cost differences. Consequently, decision‐makers need to optimally make a balance between working overtime and air conditioning measures to meet sustainable development goals., Key Points An optimization model coupled with dynamical downscaling is developed to improve labor productivity under intensified heat stress in ChinaCivilian workers in inland regions will be more vulnerable to the intensified heat stress in a changing climateCompared to the regional climate model, the global climate model overestimates heat stress and thus exaggerates related system costs to recover from the working hour loss
- Published
- 2021