A study led by a researcher of ISPM, the most influential climate paper in 2021

26.01.2022 – The study led by Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera, researcher of ISPM, and entitled «The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change» has been the most featured research on climate change in media in 2021, according to Carbon Brief, an award-winning website focused on climate change. This work, published in June 2021 in Nature Climate Change, shows for the first time the actual contribution of man-made climate change in increasing mortality risks due to heat.

With an altimetric score of 5,715, it was mentioned in 1,286 Tweets, 865 news articles and 69 blogs. Important media channels of all around the world, such as The Guardian, New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Bloomberg, Independent and Times, featured the findings of this study. It should be noted that it is the first epidemiological paper heading this list, available since 2015. The study, the largest of this kind, used data from 732 cities in 43 countries around the world collected through the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network (MCC, https://mccstudy.lshtm.ac.uk). The researchers found that between 1991 and 2018, more than a third of all deaths in which heat played a role were attributable to global warming.

It is also worth noting that two other works on health impacts of climate change are also in the top 10. Specifically, in the 8th position, «The 2021 report if the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: Code red for a healthy future» led by Romanello et al. and published in The Lancet in November 2021. Finally, the work led by Zhao et al. entitled «Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019» closes the top 10. This work was published in The Lancet Planetary Health and ISPM also contributed with Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera as one of the co-authors. She leads the Climate Change and Health research group at ISPM, created in 2019, as a joint initiative the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research.