The 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 + 3.0 °C increase in global warming relative to preindustrial). In seven of these cities, heat mortality could exceed COVID-19 deaths in less than five years. Our results underscore the crucial need for climate action and for the integration of climate change into public health discourse and policy.

Biological Sciences Division Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Richland WA USA

Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Institute of Environmental Health Beijing China

CIBERESP Madrid Spain

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

Climate and Environmental Physics Physics Institute University of Bern Bern Switzerland

Climate Research Foundation Madrid Spain

Department of Environmental Systems Science Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science ETH Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine 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 Global Health Policy Graduate School of Medicine The University of Tokyo Tokyo Japan

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

Department of Statistics Computer Science and Applications G Parenti University of Florence Florence Italy

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

Environmental Health Science and Research Bureau Health Canada Ottawa Canada

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

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

Institut Pierre Simon Laplace CNRS Paris France

Institute of Atmospheric Physics Czech Academy of Sciences Prague Czech Republic

Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine University of Bern Bern Switzerland

Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research University of Bern Bern Switzerland

School of Health Policy and Management College of Health Sciences Korea University Seoul 02841 Republic of Korea

School of Public Health and Social Work Queensland University of Technology Brisbane Australia

School of the Environment Yale University New Haven CT USA

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