5.3.1Active indicatorScientific Articles on Health and Climate Change
5.3Scientific engagement with health and climate change
5.4Political engagement with health and climate change
Indicator 5.3.1 · Engagement
Scientific Articles on Health and Climate Change
Peer-reviewed research is essential for building the evidence needed to understand the health impacts of climate change and inform effective responses. A strong scientific evidence base can support policy, public communication, and action on climate change and health. This indicator tracks scientific engagement with climate change and health in peer-reviewed research.
Headline finding
The number of scientific articles on climate change and health increased by 28% between 2024 and 2025, while publications examining the health effects of mitigation actions declined.
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Figure 1
Scientific Journal Articles Covering Health and Climate Change
Number of scientific journal articles on health and climate change from 1990 to 2025, covering three topic areas: mitigation-focused, adaptation-focused, and impacts-focused climate and health research. Results are available by study location at the country level, Human Development Index (HDI) group, World Health Organization (WHO) region, and Lancet Countdown region. Study location refers to the geographic location studied or mentioned in the article.
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About this indicator
Description
This indicator identifies original research articles and research-related articles published from 1990 to 2025 that cover health and climate change topics using a machine-learning approach. This allowed for a more granular picture of the research landscape, including developments across major domains of research (mitigation, adaptation, impacts), the health impacts covered, locations studied, as well as patterns of authorship.
Authors
Last updated
March 2026
Data downloads
Caveats
There exists no ‘complete’ repository of all scientific literature, open databases cover a large number or indexed records, however far from all entries includes abstracts which limits the automated processing. Abstracts were added manually when possible to a local copy of the OpenAlex database, but some records might be missed. Only entries with an abstract in English were annotated.
Data sources
- OpenAlex database, 2025.
- UN world population prospects data.
- GeoNames gazetteer