Health Co-benefits

Despite climate change being recognized as the greatest public health challenge in the 21st century, substantial knowledge gaps remain regarding climate change’s potential future health impacts under alternative mitigation and adaptation scenarios. A critical gap in the scientific understanding of these complex impacts is due to a combination of data limitations and discipline barriers. By leveraging sophisticated climate, air pollution, and epidemiological modeling, we examined future heat-induced myocardial infarction and mortality risk under and beyond the Paris Agreement goals (1.5 °C and 2 °C) and future ozone-related mortality under both climate and population changes. Collectively, the results of our work demonstrated the amplifying role of population aging in the projected mortality burden of temperature and air pollution under a warming climate. Our ongoing and future work will examine the effects of mitigation and adaptation policies on reducing disparities in climate-related exposures and their adverse health effects, especially adaptation strategies to extreme heat.

In collaboration with the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network, we analyzed data from 800 locations across 50 countries and found that population aging significantly drives future heat and cold-related deaths. Although global warming is expected to decrease the proportion of cold-related deaths, population aging will still increase the risk of cold-related mortality, leading to a net increase in cold-related deaths by 0.1%-0.4% at 1.5-3°C of global warming. Additionally, heat-related deaths are projected to increase by 0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.5% under 1.5°C, 2°C, and 3°C of warming, respectively.

Published in Nature Communications, 2024

Learn more about Aging Population To Be Major Driver of Future Climate-related Deaths

In collaboration with the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network, we examined short-term exposure to ground-level ozone and daily mortality in 406 cities in 20 countries and regions and used state-of-the-art CMIP6 climate model projections to calculate future ozone-related deaths under four different climate and air quality scenarios. We found that between the periods of 2010-2014 and 2050-2054, ozone-related deaths were projected to increase in all climate scenarios (from 0.17% to 0.22% total deaths), except the single scenario consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement (declines from 0.17% to 0.15% total deaths).

Published in 50 One Earth, 2024

Learn more about Ozone-related deaths projected to rise without stricter climate, air quality controls

This study shows that the combined effect of global warming and population aging results in an increase in both the heat- and the cold-related deaths in Bavaria, Germany by the end of the 21st century, where the population-effect dominates the climate-effect.

Published in Environmental Research Letters, 2019.

Our analysis shows increased future ozone-related acute excess mortality under the high global warming and emission scenario for an aging population in China.

Published in PloS Medicine, 2018.