Impact of population aging on future temperature-related mortality at different global warming levels

Authors

Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Network
Patrick Goodman, Technological University Dublin

Document Type

Article

Publication Details

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45901-z

Abstract

Older adults are generally amongst the most vulnerable to heat and cold. While temperature-related health impacts are projected to increase with global warming, the influence of population aging on these trends remains unclear. Here we show that at 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and 3 °C of global warming, heat-related mortality in 800 locations across 50 countries/areas will increase by 0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.5%, respectively; among which 1 in 5 to 1 in 4 heat-related deaths can be attributed to population aging. Despite a projected decrease in cold-related mortality due to progressive warming alone, population aging will mostly counteract this trend, leading to a net increase in cold-related mortality by 0.1%–0.4% at 1.5–3 °C global warming. Our findings indicate that population aging constitutes a crucial driver for future heat- and cold-related deaths, with increasing mortality burden for both heat and cold due to the aging population.

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-45901-z

Recommended Citation

Chen, K., de Schrijver, E., Sivaraj, S., Sera, F., Scovronick, N., Jiang, L., Roye, D., Lavigne, E., Kyselý, J., Urban, A., Schneider, A., Huber, V., Madureira, J., Mistry, M. N., Cvijanovic, I., Gasparrini, A., Vicedo-Cabrera, A. M., Armstrong, B., Schneider, R., Tobias, A., Astrom, C., Guo, Y., Honda, Y., Abrutzky, R., Tong, S., de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho, M., Saldiva, P. H. N., Correa, P. M., Ortega, N. V., Kan, H., Osorio, S., Orru, H., Indermitte, E., Jaakkola, J. J., Ryti, N., Pascal, M., Katsouyanni, K., Analitis, A., Mayvaneh, F., Entezari, A., Goodman, P., Zeka, A., Michelozzi, P., de’Donato, F., Hashizume, M., Alahmad, B., Diaz, M. H., De la Cruz Valencia, C., Overcenco, A., Houthuijs, D., Ameling, C., Rao, S., Carrasco-Escobar, G., Seposo, X., da Silva, S. P., Holobaca, I. H., Acquaotta, F., Kim, H., Lee, W., Íñiguez, C., Forsberg, B., Ragettli, M. S., Guo, Y. L. L., Pan, S. C., Li, S., Colistro, V., Zanobetti, A., Schwartz, J., Dang, T. N., Van Dung, D., Carlsen, H. K., Cauchi, J. P., Achilleos, S., & Raz, R. (2024). Impact of population aging on future temperature-related mortality at different global warming levels. Nature Communications, 15(1), Article 1796. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45901-z

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