Background: The rise in hot nights over recent decades and projections of further increases due to climate change underscores the critical need to understand their impact. This knowledge is essential for shaping public health strategies and guiding adaptation efforts. Despite their significance, research on the implications of hot nights remains limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet Planet Health
July 2025
Background: Heat exposure poses a substantial public health threat. Increasing greenness has been suggested as a mitigation strategy due to its cooling effect and potential to modify the heat-mortality association. This study aimed to comprehensively estimate the effects of increased greenness on heat-related deaths.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe impacts of climate change on human health are often underestimated or perceived to be in a distant future. Here, we present the projected impacts of climate change in the context of COVID-19, a recent human health catastrophe. We compared projected heat mortality with COVID-19 deaths in 38 cities worldwide and found that in half of these cities, heat-related deaths could exceed annual COVID-19 deaths in less than ten years (at + 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Landscape fire-sourced (LFS) air pollution is an increasing public health concern in the context of climate change. However, little is known about the attributable global, regional, and national mortality burden related to LFS air pollution.
Methods: We calculated country-specific population-weighted average daily and annual LFS fine particulate matter (PM) and surface ozone (O) during 2000-19 from a validated dataset.
Background: The minimum mortality temperature (MMT) or MMT percentile (MMTP) is an indicator of population susceptibility to nonoptimum temperatures. MMT and MMTP change over time; however, the changing directions show region-wide heterogeneity. We examined the heterogeneity of temporal changes in MMT and MMTP across multiple communities and in multiple countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Epidemiol
December 2024
Environ Epidemiol
December 2024
Background: Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) can substantially affect climate through biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects. Here, we examine the future temperature-mortality impact for two contrasting LULCC scenarios in a background climate of low greenhouse gas concentrations. The first LULCC scenario implies a globally sustainable land use and socioeconomic development (sustainability).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Epidemiol
December 2024
Background: We quantify the mortality burden and economic loss attributable to nonoptimal temperatures for cold and heat in the Central and South American countries in the Multi-City Multi-Country (MCC) Collaborative Research Network.
Methods: We collected data for 66 locations from 13 countries in Central and South America to estimate location-specific temperature-mortality associations using time-series regression with distributed lag nonlinear models. We calculated the attributable deaths for cold and heat as the 2.
Environ Epidemiol
October 2024
Background: Heterogeneity in temperature-mortality relationships across locations may partly result from differences in the demographic structure of populations and their cause-specific vulnerabilities. Here we conduct the largest epidemiological study to date on the association between ambient temperature and mortality by age and cause using data from 532 cities in 33 countries.
Methods: We collected daily temperature and mortality data from each country.
Background: Precipitation could affect the transmission of diarrheal diseases. The diverse precipitation patterns across different climates might influence the degree of diarrheal risk from precipitation. This study determined the associations between precipitation and diarrheal mortality in tropical, temperate, and arid climate regions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Wildfire activity is an important source of tropospheric ozone (O) pollution. However, no study to date has systematically examined the associations of wildfire-related O exposure with mortality globally.
Methods: We did a multicountry two-stage time series analysis.
Int J Public Health
June 2024
Objectives: This study aims to estimate the short-term preventable mortality and associated economic costs of complying with the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines (AQGs) limit values for PM and PM in nine major Latin American cities.
Methods: We estimated city-specific PM-mortality associations using time-series regression models and calculated the attributable mortality fraction. Next, we used the value of statistical life to calculate the economic benefits of complying with the WHO AQGs limit values.
Background: Extreme temperatures contribute significantly to global mortality. While previous studies on temperature and stroke-specific outcomes presented conflicting results, these studies were predominantly limited to single-city or single-country analyses. Their findings are difficult to synthesize due to variations in methodologies and exposure definitions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The regional disparity of heatwave-related mortality over a long period has not been sufficiently assessed across the globe, impeding the localisation of adaptation planning and risk management towards climate change. We quantified the global mortality burden associated with heatwaves at a spatial resolution of 0.5°×0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe assembled the first gridded burned area (BA) database of national wildfire data (ONFIRE), a comprehensive and integrated resource for researchers, non-government organisations, and government agencies analysing wildfires in various regions of the Earth. We extracted and harmonised records from different regions and sources using open and reproducible methods, providing data in a common framework for the whole period available (starting from 1950 in Australia, 1959 in Canada, 1985 in Chile, 1980 in Europe, and 1984 in the United States) up to 2021 on a common 1° × 1° grid. The data originate from national agencies (often, ground mapping), thus representing the best local expert knowledge.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOlder adults are generally amongst the most vulnerable to heat and cold. While temperature-related health impacts are projected to increase with global warming, the influence of population aging on these trends remains unclear. Here we show that at 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet Planet Health
February 2024
Background: Climate change can directly impact temperature-related excess deaths and might subsequently change the seasonal variation in mortality. In this study, we aimed to provide a systematic and comprehensive assessment of potential future changes in the seasonal variation, or seasonality, of mortality across different climate zones.
Methods: In this modelling study, we collected daily time series of mean temperature and mortality (all causes or non-external causes only) via the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative (MCC) Research Network.
Combined heat and humidity is frequently described as the main driver of human heat-related mortality, more so than dry-bulb temperature alone. While based on physiological thinking, this assumption has not been robustly supported by epidemiological evidence. By performing the first systematic comparison of eight heat stress metrics (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The epidemiological evidence on the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on mortality is still inconsistent.
Objectives: To investigate the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on daily mortality in a large dataset of 620 cities from 36 countries.
Methods: We used daily data on all-cause mortality, air temperature, particulate matter ≤ 10 μm (PM), PM ≤ 2.