Heat-related mortality has been identified as one of the key climate extremes posing a risk to human health. Current research focuses largely on how heat mortality increases with mean global temperature rise, but it is unclear how much climate change will increase the frequency and severity of extreme summer seasons with high impact on human health. In this probabilistic analysis, we combined empirical heat-mortality relationships for 748 locations from 47 countries with climate model large ensemble data to identify probable past and future highly impactful summer seasons. Across most locations, heat mortality counts of a 1-in-100 year season in the climate of 2000 would be expected once every ten to twenty years in the climate of 2020. These return periods are projected to further shorten under warming levels of 1.5 °C and 2 °C, where heat-mortality extremes of the past climate will eventually become commonplace if no adaptation occurs. Our findings highlight the urgent need for strong mitigation and adaptation to reduce impacts on human lives.

Center for Climate Change Adaptation National Institute for Environmental Studies Tsukuba Japan

Center for Environmental and Respiratory Health Research University of Oulu Oulu Finland

Centre for Statistical Methodology London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine London UK

Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine London UK

CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health Madrid Spain

Climate Air Quality Research Unit School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine Monash University Melbourne Australia

Department of Epidemiology Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr Ricardo Jorge Lisbon Portugal

Department of Pathology Faculty of Medicine University of São Paulo São Paulo Brazil

Department of Physical Chemical and Natural Systems Universidad Pablo de Olavide Sevilla Spain

Department of Public Health Environments and Society London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine London UK

Environmental and Occupational Medicine National Taiwan University College of Medicine and NTU Hospital Taipei Taiwan

Environmental Health Science and Research Bureau Health Canada Ottawa ON Canada

Faculty of Environmental Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Czech Republic

Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss Zurich Switzerland

Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health Rollins School of Public Health Emory University Atlanta GA USA

Graduate Institute of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences NTU College of Public Health Taipei Taiwan

IBE Chair of Epidemiology LMU Munich Munich Germany

Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science ETH Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Institute for Environmental Decisions ETH Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Institute of Atmospheric Physics Czech Academy of Sciences Prague Czech Republic

Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine University of Bern Bern Switzerland

National Institute of Environmental Health Science National Health Research Institutes Zhunan Taiwan

Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research University of Bern Bern Switzerland

School of Epidemiology and Public Health Faculty of Medicine University of Ottawa Ottawa ON Canada

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Nat Commun. 2024 Sep 16;15(1):8110. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-44107-z. PubMed

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Rapid climate action is needed: comparing heat vs. COVID-19-related mortality

Rainfall events and daily mortality across 645 global locations: two stage time series analysis