That Winter The Wind Blows [WORK] Full Episode Download

To investigate the existence of a coherent climate signal associated with asthma mortality, we first correlate the mean winter asthma mortality time series to geospatial sea level pressures along with surface winds (figure 2A) and surface temperatures (figure 2B). The correlation with sea level pressures reveal a clear dipole pattern with centres over the Eastern Atlantic (high) and Western Europe (low). This sea level pressure correlation pattern would result in clockwise (ie, anticyclonic) surface winds over the UK. The geospatial correlation with the surface winds is consistent with this and figure 2A shows that higher mortality are associated with statistically significant northwesterly winds across the UK. This flow would result in a cooler climate over the UK and is consistent with the correlation to surface temperatures (figure 2B). This East-West dipole pattern noted from figure 2A is seen with high asthma deaths, occurring during the winter; however, we would expect to see the opposite pattern with low asthma deaths.

that winter the wind blows full episode download

Our results indicate that there is a statistically significant correlation between the UK winter asthma mortality time series and a sea level pressure gradient across the British Isles. In such a situation, winters with an increase in asthma mortality would tend to be associated with northwesterly wind flow that would result in colder and presumably damper conditions over the UK. In addition, the sea level pressure correlation patterns bear some resemblance to the SCA. Indeed, an index of the SCA explains 20% of the UK asthma mortality during the winter season.

Hence, winter asthma mortality time series and the winter SCA index were found to have a positive association (figure 4). For example, during the winters seasons of the years 2002, 2004 and 2015, the SCA index was above normal and these winters did indeed have above average asthma mortality in the UK. During the period of interest, the highest mortality due to asthma occurred in the winter of 2015. For this winter year, the anomalies in sea level pressure, surface wind and temperature (figure 5) were consistent with the geospatial correlations (figure 2 and 3). In particular, there was a North-South pressure dipole across the UK that was associated with northwesterly wind flow. This North-South dipole resembles the geospatial SCA. Furthermore, these strong winds over East Atlantic resulted in cooler temperatures during the winter of 2015, which is consistent with recent literature finding that the North Atlantic and Western Europe experienced extremely cold sea surface temperatures during the winter season of 2015.28

In this study, we find that asthma mortality in the UK is associated with a coherent geospatial structure in the surface climate of the North Atlantic and Western European regions. This pattern transfers northwesterly wind flow across the UK from the North Atlantic, resulting in colder regional temperatures. Previous work has noted a correlation between winter admission rates for respiratory illness and temperatures in Europe.1 This pattern bears some resemblance to an important winter geospatial climate pattern, the SCA. Approximately 20% of the variance in the UK winter asthma mortality from 2001 to 2015 can be explained through the SCA climate pattern. Hence this work suggests that geospatial climate patterns can have an influence to human health and consequently, additional future research should be conducted to further understand such a connection. We believe that this may result in improved forecasts of asthma mortality. Overall, we recommend that a geospatial approach to understanding chronic respiratory diseases be used in future studies of environmental impact on human health.