Understanding human health impacts of tropical cyclones across scales

Tropical cyclones (TCs) directly and indirectly impact human health, yet understanding the mechanisms through which these impacts occur is challenging. Impacts span across temporal and spatial scales that can extend far beyond the point of landfall and can be sustained for years after an event. People’s vulnerabilities to TC hazards vary widely through space and time, and are dependent on various economic, cultural, and infrastructural aspects. At the same time, we show that TC wind and rainfall vary strongly across storms, across locations, and through time. In addition, climate change is likely to change TC hazards and human vulnerabilities in ways that have the potential to worsen health outcomes. This chapter explores opportunities for deeper collaboration between environmental epidemiology, meteorology, and climatology to advance understanding of health impacts across scales. In particular, advancing hypothesized mechanisms may be achieved through analyzing health outcomes across large collections of historical events through time and across geographic regions.