Health losses attributable to anthropogenic climate change

Abstract

Despite widespread consensus that climate change poses a serious threat to global public health, very few studies have isolated the specific contributions of human-caused climate change to changes in morbidity and mortality. Here, we systematically review over 3,600 abstracts, and identify a dozen end-to-end impact attribution studies on human health outcomes published between 2016 and 2023. Based on these studies, we find that estimates of attributable mortality range from 10 to over 271,000 deaths, depending on timescale, spatial extent, climate hazard, and cause of death. We calculate that this loss of life amounts to up to US$ trillions in monetary value when using standard valuation approaches. So far, end-to-end attribution studies capture only a small fraction of the presumed global burden of climate change, with few studies addressing infectious and non-communicable diseases, and no subnational or event-specific studies focused on a location outside of Europe and the United States. However, the field of health impact attribution is poised to explode in the next decade, putting unprecedented pressure on policymakers to take action for human health.