Refining methods for attributing health impacts to climate change: a heat-mortality case study in Zürich

Rupert F. Stuart-Smith (), Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera, Sihan Li, Friederike E.L. Otto, Kristine Belesova, Andy Haines, Luke J. Harrington, Jeremy J. Hess, Rashmi Venkatraman, Thom Wetzer, Alistair Woodward and Kristie L. Ebi
Additional contact information
Rupert F. Stuart-Smith: University of Oxford
Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera: University of Bern
Sihan Li: University of Sheffield
Friederike E.L. Otto: Imperial College London
Kristine Belesova: Imperial College London
Andy Haines: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Luke J. Harrington: University of Waikato
Jeremy J. Hess: University of Washington
Rashmi Venkatraman: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Thom Wetzer: University of Oxford
Alistair Woodward: University of Auckland
Kristie L. Ebi: University of Washington

Climatic Change, 2025, vol. 178, issue 9, No 7, 22 pages

Abstract: Abstract Heat-related deaths occur throughout the summer months, peak during heatwaves, and are affected by temperature and exposed populations’ sensitivities to meteorological conditions. Previous studies found that climate change is increasing heat-related mortality worldwide. We build on existing epidemiological methods to shed light on the adverse effects of climate change on human health. We address limitations in existing methods and apply refined approaches to assess heat mortality attributable to human-induced climate change in Zürich, Switzerland, over 50 years (1969–2018) including a case study of summer 2018. Our methodological refinements affect how counterfactual climate scenarios are derived, and facilitate accounting for changing vulnerability, and assessing impacts during and outside heatwaves. We find nearly 1,700 heat-related deaths attributable to human-induced climate change between 1969 and 2018. Declining vulnerability to heat avoided at least 700 heat-related deaths. The approach described here could be applied elsewhere to quantify the effect of climate change on other health outcomes.

Keywords: Climate change attribution; Epidemiology; Climate impacts; Health. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-025-04011-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:178:y:2025:i:9:d:10.1007_s10584-025-04011-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-025-04011-5

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().