EGU24-8234, updated on 08 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-8234
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Urgency of Climate Change through the lens of COVID-19 Pandemic: the case of heat-related mortality

Fulden Batibeniz1,2,3, Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne1, Srinidhi Jha1, Andreia Ribeiro1, Laura Suarez Gutierrez1, Christoph C. Raible2,3, Ben Armstrong5, Michelle L. Bell6, Eric Lavigne7,8, Antonio Gasparrini9, Yuming Guo10,11, Masahiro Hashizume12, Pierre Masselot9, Susana Pereira da Silva13, Dominic Royé14,15, Francesco Sera16, Shilu Tong17,18, Aleš Urban19,20, Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera2,4, and the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network*
Fulden Batibeniz et al.
  • 1Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 3Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 4Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 5Department of Public Health Environments and Society, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
  • 6School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven CT, USA
  • 7School of Epidemiology & Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
  • 8Environmental Health Science & Research Bureau, Health Canada, Ottawa, Canada
  • 9Environment & Health Modelling (EHM) Lab, Department of Public Health Environments and Society, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  • 10Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
  • 11Climate, Air Quality Research Unit, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
  • 12Department of Global Health Policy, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
  • 13Department of Epidemiology, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge, Lisbon, Portugal
  • 14Climate Research Foundation (FIC), Madrid, Spain
  • 15CIBERESP, Madrid, Spain
  • 16Department of Statistics, Computer Science and Applications "G. Parenti", University of Florence, Florence, Italy
  • 17National Institute of Environmental Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China
  • 18School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
  • 19Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
  • 20Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and climate change are both urgent global health concerns. However, their impact on human lives has not been compared on the same scale. In this study, we compared mortality due to heat with COVID-19 in 38 cities worldwide, considering different levels of global warming (+1°C, +1.5°C, +2°C, and +3°C). Our findings reveal that even at a global warming level of +1.0ºC, 6 cities are already at a point where heat-related deaths could equal COVID-19 deaths within 15 years. Regardless of high or low COVID-19 mortality in the cities, the number of years to reach the level of COVID-19 mortality decreases with higher global warming levels. In 18.4% to 47.4% of the cities, heat-related mortality is projected to equal COVID-19 mortality within 15 years, ranging from +1.0ºC to +3.0ºC of global warming. The vulnerability to climate change varies among regions, with European, Mediterranean, and North American cities experiencing a significant rise in heat-related mortality with higher global warming levels. It is important to note that the given number of years represents the time required to reach COVID-19 mortality. However, unlike the peak and decline of COVID-19, climate change-driven heat-related deaths will persistently worsen unless substantial adaptation measures are taken. This emphasizes the crucial need to integrate climate change into public health discourse and policy.

Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network:

Rosana Abrutzky, Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho, Paulo Hilario Nascimento Saldiva, Patricia Matus Correa, Nicolás Valdés Ortega, Jan Kyselý, Hans Orru, Ene Indermitte, Jouni J. K. Jaakkola, Niilo Ryti, Mathilde Pascal, Alexandra Schneider, Veronika Huber, Klea Katsouyanni, Antonis Analitis, Fatemeh Mayvaneh, Hematollah Roradeh, Raanan Raz, Paola Michelozzi, Francesca de'Donato, Masahiro Hashizume, Yoonhee Kim, Barrak Alahmad, Magali Hurtado Diaz, Eunice Elizabeth Félix Arellano, Ala Overcenco, Danny Houthuijs, Caroline Ameling, Shilpa Rao, Xerxes Seposo, Paul Lester Carlos Chua, Joana Madureira, Iulian-Horia Holobaca, Noah Scovronick, Fiorella Acquaotta, Ho Kim, Whanhee Lee, Aurelio Tobias, Carmen Íñiguez, Bertil Forsberg, Martina S. Ragettli, Shanshan Li, Valentina Colistro, Antonella Zanobetti, Joel Schwartz, Tran Ngoc Dang, Do Van Dung, Antonio Gasparrini, Michelle L. Bell, Yuming Guo, Yasushi Honda, Aleš Urban, Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, Pierre Masselot, Ben Armstrong, Eric Lavigne, Susana Pereira da Silva, Dominic Royé, Francesco Sera, Shilu Tong

How to cite: Batibeniz, F., Seneviratne, S. I., Jha, S., Ribeiro, A., Gutierrez, L. S., Raible, C. C., Armstrong, B., Bell, M. L., Lavigne, E., Gasparrini, A., Guo, Y., Hashizume, M., Masselot, P., Pereira da Silva, S., Royé, D., Sera, F., Tong, S., Urban, A., and Vicedo-Cabrera, A. M. and the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network: Urgency of Climate Change through the lens of COVID-19 Pandemic: the case of heat-related mortality, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-8234, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-8234, 2024.