Abstract
An unprecedented heatwave swept the globe in 2023, marking it as one of the hottest years on record, raising concerns about its health impacts. However, a comprehensive assessment of the heatwave-related mortality and its attribution to human-induced climate change remains lacking. We aim to address this gap by combining high-resolution climate and mortality data from 2,013 locations across 67 countries with a three-stage modelling approach. First, we estimated historical heatwave-mortality associations using a quasi-Poisson regression model with distributed lag structures, considering lag effects, seasonality, and within-week variations. Second, we pooled the estimates in meta-regression, accounting for spatial heterogeneity and potential changes in heatwave-mortality associations over time. Third, we predicted grid-specific (0.5°×0.5°) association in 2023 and calculated the heatwave-related excess deaths, death ratio, and death rate per million people. Attribution analysis was conducted by comparing heatwave-related mortality under factual and counterfactual climate scenarios. We estimated 178,486 excess deaths (95% empirical Confidence Interval [eCI]: 159,892−204,147) related to the 2023 heatwave, accounting for 0.73% of global deaths, corresponding to 23 deaths per million people. The highest mortality rates occurred in Southern (120,95% eCI: 116−126), Eastern (107, 95% eCI: 100−114), and Western Europe (66, 95% eCI: 62−70). The excess death ratio was also higher in these regions. Notably, 54.29% (95% eCI: 45.71−61.36%) of these deaths were attributable to human-induced climate change. These results underscore the urgent need for adaptive public health interventions and climate mitigation strategies to mitigate future mortality burdens under increasing global warming.