Abby Swanson (u1226172@utah.edu)

Human health and well-being are influenced by local climates. Factors such as increasing ambient temperatures and precipitation cause increases in human mortality. However, not all communities are equally negatively impacted by these factors and for some, these changes might produce positive outcomes (if only temporarily). For example, in a hot arid desert, seasonal rains, tropical storms, and hurricanes might produce positive outcomes on human health and well-being. Here, we seek to assess how climatic factors such as ambient temperature and tropical storms/hurricanes influence mortality in Baja California Sur, Mexico over a ten-year window. To do so, we extracted data on local climate, the presence of hurricanes, and mortality events using freely available data from Mexican government archives. Our analyses suggest that 1) both within and between years, hotter ambient temperatures are positively correlated with mortality events, and 2) within years, hurricanes and tropical storms are negatively related to mortality events. While we find a strong relationship between local climate and mortality, we suggest that not all climatic events that are construed as negative have negative impacts on human mortality.