Billions of people exposed to increasing heat but decreasing greenness from 2000 to 2022.

ABSTRACT: Rising heat stress due to climate warming poses a significant threat to human health, and greenness offers a nature-based solution to mitigate heat-related health impacts and enhance resilience. Although global greenness has increased, it remains unclear whether these trends align with the population's heat mitigation needs. In this study, we integrated spatially resolved demographic data with satellite-derived greenness metric and reanalysis-based heat stress data to construct a global profile of joint exposure at 1 × 1 km resolution from 2000 to 2022. We found that 69.3% of global populated areas and 41.3% of the global population (∼2.9 billion people) were exposed to increasing heat stress but decreasing greenness (IHDG), representing the most concerning situation for heat mitigation. U

SUBMITTER: Ye T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12105507 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature