Abstract
Sudden Stratospheric Warmings (SSWs) during boreal winter are one of the
main drivers of sub-seasonal climate variability in the Northern
Hemisphere. Although the impact of SSW events on surface climate and
climate extremes has been clearly demonstrated , the impact of the
resulting climate anomalies on society has not been so widely
considered. In the United Kingdom (UK), SSWs are associated with cold
weather, which is linked to significant increases in mortality. This
study demonstrates, for the first time, that SSWs are linked to
increases in mortality in the UK. A distributed lag non-linear model and
standard parameter settings from the literature is used to construct a
daily time series of UK deaths attributable to cold weather between 1991
and 2018. Weekly mortality associated with SSWs is diagnosed using a
superposed epoch analysis of attributed mortality for the 15 SSW events
in this period. SSW associated mortality peaks between 3 and 5 weeks
after SSW central date and leads to, on average, 620 additional deaths
in the same period. Given that the impacts of SSWs can be skilfully
predicted on sub-seasonal timescales, this suggests that health and
social care systems could derive substantial benefit from sub-seasonal
forecasts during SSWs.