Climate change increasing pregnancy risks around the world due to extreme heat

Read the full report: Climate change increasing pregnancy risks around the world due to extreme heat (2020-2024)
Download the data: For 247 countries, territories, and dependencies and 940 cities around the world

Key Facts

• Extreme heat presents dangerous risks to global maternal health and birth outcomes, and it’s becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.

• Climate Central analyzed daily temperatures during the past five years (2020 to 2024) in 247 countries, territories, and dependencies and 940 global cities to count the number of pregnancy heat-risk days. Pregnancy heat-risk days have maximum temperatures warmer than 95% of temperatures observed at a given location — a threshold associated with an increased risk of preterm birth.

• During 2020 to 2024, nearly one-third of analyzed countries (78 out of 247) experienced at least one additional month’s worth of pregnancy heat-risk days on average annually due to climate change.

• In most countries (222), climate change at least doubled the average annual number of pregnancy heat-risk days experienced during the past five years, compared to a world without climate change.

• The greatest increases in pregnancy heat-risk days due to climate change over the past five years occurred primarily in developing regions with limited access to healthcare — most notably in the Caribbean, and parts of Central and South America, the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Data

• Download data for for 247 countries, territories, and dependencies and 940 cities around the world.

• Explore interactive maps for countries and cities across six continents.

Major funding provided by the Bezos Earth Fund