Climate-Induced Hazards and Human Impacts: A Systematic Review

Climate change is accelerating the frequency and intensity of climate-induced hazards, generating increasingly complex risks for human societies. Despite rapid growth in related scholarship, the evidence base remains fragmented, geographically uneven, and analytically imbalanced. This systematic review synthesizes peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 2005 and 2025, identified through Web of Science and Scopus using PRISMA-guided screening. Based on 184 eligible articles, we examine publication trends, hazard types, methodological approaches, and documented human impacts to identify dominant patterns, structural gaps, and emerging research priorities.

The review reveals a pronounced surge in publications after 2020, reflecting heightened scientific and policy attention to climate-related disasters. However, empirical research remains heavily concentrated in a small number of countries, particularly the United States and China, while many regions are represented only by isolated case studies. The literature is dominated by hydro-climatic hazards, especially flooding and drought, with growing attention to heat extremes and tropical cyclones. Although multi-hazard perspectives are increasingly adopted, few studies explicitly analyze compound or temporally interacting hazards. Human impacts are most commonly examined in terms of economic, livelihood, and health outcomes, whereas slow-onset environmental degradation and long-term socio-ecological transformations receive comparatively limited attention. Moreover, affected populations are often treated as homogeneous, with limited demographic or intersectional disaggregation.

By consolidating two decades of research, this review highlights the need for geographically diversified and replicable studies, analytical frameworks capable of capturing compound and long-term risks, and equity-centered approaches that foreground social heterogeneity and differential vulnerability. Advancing these priorities is essential for strengthening the scientific foundation of climate risk assessment and informing more inclusive and effective adaptation and resilience strategies.