Projecting health impacts of climate extremes: A methodological overview

Reliable estimates of future health impacts due to climate extremes are needed to inform and contribute to the design of effective adaptation and mitigation strategies against global warming. However, projecting health burdens associated to specific environmental stressors is a challenging task, due to the complex risk patterns and inherent uncertainty of future climate scenarios. To properly handle these methodological issues, advanced study designs and statistical techniques are required. In this chapter, we present an overview of the latest methodological advances applied in epidemiological studies on health impacts projections under climate change scenarios. We provide an in-depth discussion on the available choices, the related assumptions and its potential limitations. We also illustrate a methodological framework recently developed using a real-world example of projection study on temperature-related mortality in London.