Exhaustion

Climate change affects human health; however, there have been no large-scale, systematic efforts to quantify the heat-related human health impacts that have already occurred due to climate change. Here, we use empirical data from 732 locations in 43 countries to estimate the mortality burdens associated with the additional heat exposure that has resulted from recent human-induced warming, during the period 1991–2018. Across all study countries, we find that 37.0% (range 20.5–76.3%) of warm-season heat-related deaths can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change and that increased mortality is evident on every continent. Burdens varied geographically but were of the order of dozens to hundreds of deaths per year in many locations. Our findings support the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change.

Global warming is leading to increased heat stress in many regions around the world. An extensive number of heat stress indicators (HSIs) has been developed to measure the associated impacts on human health.

Urbanization and ongoing climate change increase the exposure of the populations to heat stress, and the urban heat island (UHI) effect may magnify heat-related mortality, especially during heatwaves.

The lockdown response to COVID-19 has resulted in an unprecedented reduction in global economic activity and associated air pollutant levels, especially from a decline in land transportation.

Reliable projections of extremes by climate models are becoming increasingly important in the context of climate change and associated societal impacts.

Various retrospective studies have reported on the increase of mortality risk due to higher diurnal temperature range (DTR). This study projects the effect of DTR on future mortality across 445 communities in 20 countries and regions.

Data from satellites, reanalysis, and chemical transport models offer additional information used to reconstruct pollution concentrations at high spatio-temporal resolutions.

Extreme heat events are now more frequent in many parts of the world as a result of climate change. The combined effects of heat, air pollution, individual age, and socioeconomic and health status need to be considered in order to prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases effectively.

Air conditioning has been proposed as one of the key factors explaining reductions of heat-related mortality risks observed in the last decades. However, direct evidence is still limited.

Italy was the first country outside China to experience the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a significant health burden. This study presents an analysis of the excess mortality across the 107 Italian provinces, stratified by sex, age group and period of the outbreak.

It has been reported that suicide is associated with ambient temperature; however, the heterogeneity in this association and its underlying factors have not been extensively investigated.

Investigating future changes in temperature-related mortality as a function of global mean temperature (GMT) rise allows for the evaluation of policy-relevant climate change targets. So far, only few studies have taken this approach, and, in particular, no such assessments exist for Germany, the most populated country of Europe.

In this cohort study of 211 counties in 46 states, social distancing, temperate weather, and lower population density were associated with a decrease in the instantaneous reproduction number of SARS-CoV-2.

We find that, after accounting for meteorological variations, lockdown events have reduced the population-weighted concentration of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter levels by about 60% and 31% in 34 countries, with mixed effects on ozone. Reductions in transportation sector emissions are largely responsible for the NO2 anomalies.

Particulate matter air pollution is widely considered as the leading environmental cause of premature mortality. However, there are substantial differences in the estimated health burden between the assessments.

This article discusses existing research gaps and introduces the EU project EXHAUSTION which aims to fill at least some of them.

This international study is by far the largest epidemiological investigation on short-term CO-related mortality. We found significant associations between ambient CO and daily mortality, even at levels well below current air quality guidelines. Further studies are warranted to disentangle its independent effect from other traffic-related pollutants.