Published At: 18 Jul 2025
Speaker: Sirinya Kaikeaw and Rosanna Gualdi (Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Bologna)
Environmental extremes such as heatwaves, droughts, floods, and storms are projected to increase in both frequency and intensity over the course of the 21st century; climate change poses a significant, pressing public health concern, affecting population mental and physical health. These effects are heterogeneous across population subgroups, differing by various sociodemographic and spatial characteristics, including age, sex, socio-economic status, pre-existing health conditions and place of residence. Currently, there is a lack of scientific consensus on how extreme climatic events and temperatures differentially affect mortality patterns. If climate change only leads to mortality displacement, its long-run effect on population dynamics is likely to be negligible. It is however plausible that climate change-induced extreme events contribute to substantial increase in mortality. During this seminar the EU-funded POPCLIMA project will share global and local insights on current and future mortality patterns under climate change, with a particular focus on the ongoing research, data sources and methodological approaches. The seminar will begin with a global systematic literature review assessing the climate extreme-mortality relationship (1), followed by two in-depth studies, the first focusing on geographic, sociodemographic, and climatic characteristics in mortality across European countries (2), the second on potential future trajectories of European mortality related to temperature and global warming (3). These findings contribute to the understanding of the effect of climate change on mortality rates and aim to inform assumptions about future population dynamics.
https://ipsr.mahidol.ac.th/en/post_training/in-house-1338/
