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

• Autor(a) principal: Chen, K
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: 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, MN, Cvijanovic, I, MCC Collaborative Research Network, Gasparrini, A, Vicedo-Cabrera, AM
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/157564

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.