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Long-term impacts of heatwaves on accelerated ageing

Nature Climate Change volume 15, pages 1000–1007 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate change and population ageing are both urgent global challenges. Yet the interaction between these, such as associations between long-term exposure to heatwaves and biological age acceleration (BAA), is unclear. Here we analysed data from 24,922 adults in a longitudinal cohort in Taiwan (2008–2022) and used linear mixed models to show heatwaves accelerate ageing. Heatwaves were defined using both relative and absolute thresholds. BAA was calculated as the difference between biological and chronological age. Each interquartile range increase in the cumulative exposure to heatwaves was associated with a 0.023- to 0.031-year increase in BAA. Moreover, the participants demonstrated gradual adaptation to heatwave impacts over the 15-year period. Furthermore, manual workers, rural residents and participants from communities with fewer air conditioners were more susceptible to the health impacts. This study highlights the need for targeted policies and interventions to strengthen adaptive capacity, delay ageing and promote healthy ageing.

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Fig. 1: Associations between heatwave exposure and BAA.
Fig. 2: Concentration–response associations between heatwave exposure and BAA.
Fig. 3: Three-dimensional surface of heatwave exposure and year on BAA.
Fig. 4: Stratified associations between heatwave exposure and BAA.

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Data availability

Daily temperature data are available from the ERA5 land reanalysis dataset (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/reanalysis-era5-land?tab=overview). The cohort data were obtained from the MJ Health Management Institution and are not publicly available due to legal and ethical regulations. However, access may be granted to qualified researchers on reasonable request to the institution (contact_us@mjhrf.org) and the corresponding author. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code to reproduce the analysis is available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15760341 (ref. 48).

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Acknowledgements

C.G. was in part supported by HKU Seed Fund for Collaborative Research (2207101523) and National Natural Science Foundation of China Young Scientists Fund (4240070121). Part of the data used in this research was authorized by the MJ Health Research Foundation (authorization code MJHRF2022008A). Any interpretation or conclusion described in this paper does not necessarily represent the views of MJ Health Research Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Siyi Chen, Yufei Liu, Yuanyuan Yi, Yiling Zheng, Shenjing He & Cui Guo

  2. School of Public Health, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China

    Jun Yang

  3. Department of Environmental Health Risk Assessment, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China

    Tiantian Li

  4. Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Ta-Chien Chan

  5. Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Rui Duan

  6. Urban Systems Institute, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Shenjing He & Cui Guo

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Contributions

S.C. and C.G. conceived of and designed the study. S.C. performed the analysis and created the visualizations. S.C. and C.G. drafted and revised the paper and interpreted the findings. C.G. secured funding and provided project administration and supervision. Y.L. and Y.Z. contributed to data collection and curation. Y.Y. conducted software and code validation. J.Y., T.L., T.-C.C., R.D. and S.H. contributed to data interpretation and paper revision. All authors approved the final version of the paper.

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Correspondence to Cui Guo.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Paul Beggs, Pierre Masselot and the other, anonymous, reviewer for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Chen, S., Liu, Y., Yi, Y. et al. Long-term impacts of heatwaves on accelerated ageing. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 1000–1007 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02407-w

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