REVIEWJOURNAL ARTICLEThe 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change has been formed to map out the impacts of climate change, and the necessary policy responses, in order to ensure the highest attainable standards of health for populations worldwide. This Commission is multidisciplinary and international in nature, with strong collaboration between academic centres in Europe and China.\ud The central finding from the Commission's work is that tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century.The central funding for the Commission was provided by ClimateWorks Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, Microsoft Research Asia, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the National Environment Research Council through an Impact Acceleration award to the University of Exeter (NE/L012782/1), Martin Rushton-Turner, the Stordalen Foundation, and University College London’s Grand Challenge for Global Health

In response to a growing demand for subnational and spatially explicit data on China’s future population, this study estimates China’s provincial population from 2010 to 2100 by age (0–100+), sex (male and female) and educational levels (illiterate, primary school, junior-high school, senior-high school, college, bachelor’s, and master’s and above) under different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The provincial projection takes into account fertility promoting policies and population ceiling restrictions of megacities that have been implemented in China in recent years to reduce systematic biases in current studies. The predicted provincial population is allocated to spatially explicit population grids for each year at 30 arc-seconds resolution based on representative concentration pathway (RCP) urban grids and historical population grids. The provincial projection data were validated using population data in 2017 from China’s Provincial Statistical Yearbook, and the accuracy of the population grids in 2015 was evaluated. These data have numerous potential uses and can serve as inputs in climate policy research with requirements for precise administrative or spatial population data in China.

Evidence shows a continuing increase in the frequency and severity of global heatwaves^1,2, raising concerns about the future impacts of climate change and the associated socioeconomic costs^3,4. Here we develop a disaster footprint analytical framework by integrating climate, epidemiological and hybrid input–output and computable general equilibrium global trade models to estimate the midcentury socioeconomic impacts of heat stress. We consider health costs related to heat exposure, the value of heat-induced labour productivity loss and indirect losses due to economic disruptions cascading through supply chains. Here we show that the global annual incremental gross domestic product loss increases exponentially from 0.03 ± 0.01 (SSP 245)–0.05 ± 0.03 (SSP 585) percentage points during 2030–2040 to 0.05 ± 0.01–0.15 ± 0.04 percentage points during 2050–2060. By 2060, the expected global economic losses reach a total of 0.6–4.6% with losses attributed to health loss (37–45%), labour productivity loss (18–37%) and indirect loss (12–43%) under different shared socioeconomic pathways. Small- and medium-sized developing countries suffer disproportionately from higher health loss in South-Central Africa (2.1 to 4.0 times above global average) and labour productivity loss in West Africa and Southeast Asia (2.0–3.3 times above global average). The supply-chain disruption effects are much more widespread with strong hit to those manufacturing-heavy countries such as China and the USA, leading to soaring economic losses of 2.7 ± 0.7% and 1.8 ± 0.5%, respectively.