ArticleNPJ climate and atmospheric science2023
Commonly used indices disagree about the effect of moisture on heat stress.
Article in NPJ climate and atmospheric science, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Vulnerable to heat stress: gaps in international standard metric thresholds.International journal of biometeorology · 2024Pooled it
- Age-specific exposure to human-induced increases in humid heat.Science advances · 2026Article
- Reclassifying lethal heat.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A Global High-Resolution Comprehensive Heat Indices Dataset from 1950 to 2024.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Exploring the risk of heat stress in high school pre-season sports training, Johannesburg, South Africa.International journal of biometeorology · 2025Article
- Sometimes missing the heat: the risk of underestimating extreme heat days with daily maximum heat index approximation.International journal of biometeorology · 2025Article
- Projected population exposure to dangerous heat stress around Lake Victoria under a high-end climate change scenario.Environmental research letters : ERL [Web site] · 2025Article
- Daily rainfall variability controls humid heatwaves in the global tropics and subtropics.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A global high-resolution and bias-corrected dataset of CMIP6 projected heat stress metrics.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Heat Index: An Alternative Indicator for Measuring the Impacts of Meteorological Factors on Diarrhoea in the Climate Change Era: A Time Series Study in Dhaka, Bangladesh.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- A New, Zero-Iteration Analytic Implementation of Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature: Development, Validation, and Comparison With Other Methods.GeoHealth · 2024Article
- A scoping review on heat indices used to measure the effects of heat on maternal and perinatal health.BMJ public health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Irrigation and urban greening can mitigate extreme temperatures and reduce adverse health impacts from heat. However, some recent studies suggest these interventions could actually exacerbate heat stress by increasing humidity. These studies use different heat stress indices (HSIs), hindering intercomparisons of the relative roles of temperature and humidity. Our method uses calculus of variations to compare the sensitivity of HSIs to temperature and humidity, independent of HSI units. We explain the properties of different HSIs and identify conditions under which they disagree. We highlight recent studies where the use of different HSIs could have led to opposite conclusions. Our findings have significant implications for the evaluation of irrigation and urban greening as adaptive responses to overheating and climate adaptation measures in general. We urge researchers to be critical in their choice of HSIs, especially in relation to health outcomes; our method provides a useful tool for making informed comparisons.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.