Regions with greater socioeconomic inequalities are more affected by cold weather, whereas areas with higher levels of wealth and urbanisation are at greater risk during heatwaves and lower risk during cold spells. This is shown by a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the ”la Caixa” Foundation. The results, published in Nature Health, for the first time quantify across the urban and rural population of 32 European countries how socioeconomic inequalities influence temperature-related mortality.

New research shows extreme heat and humidity are already pushing Hajj pilgrims beyond survivability limits, with the greatest danger during Arafat and future pilgrimages expected to become more hazardous.

Heat stress from marine heatwaves can create a toxic relationship between seagrasses and a hidden ecosystem of bacteria, transforming a previously beneficial co-existence between marine plants and microbes into a harmful one, a University of Sydney and UNSW study has found.

Record-breaking heatwaves, torrential rainfall and supercell thunderstorms: extreme events are intensifying under the influence of climate change, with major human and economic consequences. Artificial intelligence models are revolutionizing weather forecasting. But can they anticipate such exceptional events? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) shows that, to date, traditional numerical models remain more reliable for predicting extreme phenomena, even though AI models outperform them under typical conditions. These findings are published in Science Advances.

The World Stroke Organization is warning that climate change poses an escalating threat to brain health, with extreme heat in particular increasing the risk of having a stroke and of patients dying from stroke.

Up to 36 per cent of animal habitats on land could be exposed to multiple extreme climate events by 2085, according to a new international study.

A Simon Fraser University researcher was part of an international team that used climate impact modelling to project how much of the planet’s land animals’ habitat would experience multiple extreme heat waves, wildfires, droughts or river floods under low- to high-emissions scenarios over the next 60 years.

“We were looking at what percentage of amphibian, bird, mammal and reptile land habitats would experience repeated extreme events such as back-to-back heat waves or a heat wave followed by a wildfire,” says Sian Kou-Giesbrecht, a contributing author of the study.