Window to tackle Europe’s global heating deaths closing, experts warn

Heat killed 62,000 people across Europe in 2024, and deaths related to extreme temperatures rose in nearly every part of the continent over the past decade, a new report has found.

Issued on: 22/04/2026 - RFI

The arrival of the Asian tiger mosquito in France over the past decade has led to the spread of associated diseases, such as chikungunya. © Getty Images - Pawich Sattalerd

The window for meaningful action to tackle the intensifying impact of global heating on human health is "narrowing", according to the latest Lancet Countdown Europe report, published on Wednesday.

Compiled by 65 researchers from 46 academic and United Nations institutions, the annual report tracks how climate change affects human health.

It found that 820 of the 823 regions monitored recorded a rise in heat-attributable deaths between 2015 and 2024, compared with the period 1991 to 2000, with an average increase of 52 deaths per million inhabitants per year.

Over the same period, daily extreme heat warnings rose by 318 percent.

“Across Europe, the health impacts of climate change are intensifying faster than our response is keeping up,” said eco-epidemiologist Joacim Rocklöv, co-director of Lancet Countdown Europe.

Nearly all European regions monitored experienced an increase in deaths. The most severely affected were the Balkans, Italy, Spain and Mediterranean France.

Health impacts include heatstroke, sleep disruption, worsening of chronic diseases and adverse birth outcomes, with infants and the elderly the most vulnerable groups.

Climate change is also compounding food insecurity across Europe as a result of rising temperatures and ensuing drought. More than 1 million additional people across Europe experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023 compared to the 1981-2010 baseline, researchers found.

Mosquito-borne diseases

The report also documents how climate change is speeding up the spread of infectious diseases, as higher temperatures encourage mosquito habitats.

The overall risk of dengue outbreaks in Europe has almost quadrupled over the past decade, rising by 297 percent since the 1980-2010 baseline, the authors noted.

Cases of the West Nile, Chikungunya and Zika viruses are also increasing across the region.

France is identified as the European country most affected by new transmission clusters of diseases carried by the tiger mosquito.

Meanwhile, the pollen season has lengthened by one to two weeks since the 1990s, with concentrations of birch and olive pollen rising by 15 to 20 percent in northern France.

“Rising heat, worsening household air pollution, exposure to infectious diseases and growing threats to food security are placing millions of people at risk today – not in a distant future,” said Rocklöv.

“The choices we make now will decide whether these health impacts worsen quickly or whether we begin moving towards a safer, fairer and more resilient Europe."

However, the report warns that political and public responses are failing to match the scale of the crisis. Of 4,477 speeches delivered in the European Parliament in 2024, only 21 addressed the link between climate change and health.

Fossil fuels

The report does highlight some progress – such as the rapid growth of renewable energy and a reduced dependence on fossil fuels, which has helped improve air quality.

“We are also seeing a decline in air pollution primarily coming from the energy sector, and the link between mortality and air pollution related to energy and transport continues to decrease overall, resulting in significant health benefits,” Rocklöv noted.

Nonetheless, the authors say governments remain "locked in a dependence on fossil fuels" that is worsening health risks and economic vulnerability.

In a context marked by the global energy shock caused by the war in Iran, the authors said: “As long as Europe remains reliant on fossil fuels, its economies, public budgets, and health will continue to be vulnerable.”

"The window for action is narrowing," said Cathryn Tonne, co-director of the report and a professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. "But Europe has an opportunity to reinforce its decarbonisation leadership and pursue rapid, coordinated and health-centred climate action."

The Poor Did Not Start This Fire – OpEd

April 19, 2026 
By Dr. Fr. John Singarayar


(UCA News) — Stand at the edge of a paddy field in Odisha in March, and you will understand what climate change feels like from the ground.

The sun is already merciless by eight in the morning, pressing down on cracked earth that should still carry some winter moisture. The farmer who has worked this land his entire life squints at a sky that offers nothing.

The heat has arrived earlier than it used to and is sharper than it was, and it will not leave for months. A few hundred kilometers away, in a crowded Mumbai residential building, an elderly man fans himself throughout a night that refuses to cool, his heart straining against the heat the city has never recorded before.

These are not isolated stories. They are India’s new normal, and they carry a public health toll that is only beginning to be fully understood.

India is among the countries most exposed to climate-related health risks, and the reasons are structural as much as geographic.

A vast population — large numbers of whom work outdoors, live in informal settlements, or depend directly on land and water for survival — means that environmental stress translates quickly into human suffering.

When the temperature rises, it is the construction worker on an open site, the agricultural laborer bent over in a field, and the rickshaw puller navigating a concrete city who bear the first and heaviest blow.

Heat exhaustion and heatstroke are no longer occasional emergencies; they are seasonal realities in states like Rajasthan, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra, where summer temperatures now regularly breach 45 degrees Celsius.

The health consequences extend well beyond heat. Shifting rainfall patterns and warmer standing water have expanded the range and intensity of vector-borne diseases.

Dengue, once concentrated in specific urban pockets, now appears in districts that had little familiarity with it. Malaria persists stubbornly in regions where public health systems assumed it was retreating.

As flood cycles grow more unpredictable, waterborne diseases follow — cholera, typhoid, and leptospirosis spread through communities whose drainage and sanitation infrastructure were never designed for the volumes of water now arriving.

The 2023 floods in Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim were not simply weather events; they were public health crises that overwhelmed local hospitals and contaminated water sources for weeks.

Food security, which underpins everything else, is under quiet but serious pressure. India still carries one of the world’s highest burdens of child malnutrition, and climate disruption makes that burden harder to reduce. Erratic monsoons undermine staple crop yields. Coastal fishing communities along the shores of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha are watching catches shrink as ocean temperatures rise and fish populations migrate or decline.

When nutrition falters, immunity weakens, and communities already living on the margins become more vulnerable to every other health threat the warming climate produces.

It is the tribal communities, the original inhabitants, and the rural poor who face the sharpest edge of all this. They contribute least to the emissions driving climate change, yet they live closest to the ecosystems being disrupted — forests, rivers, wetlands, and coasts whose stability their health and livelihoods depend on entirely.

When forests are cleared for mining or large infrastructure, when rivers are dammed without adequate consideration of downstream communities, the consequences land not in boardrooms but in bodies. Children go undernourished. Women walk further for water. Men seek work in cities that are themselves overheating.

Pope Francis captured this moral dimension precisely in Laudato Si’ when he wrote that the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor rise as one.

In India, that is not a metaphor. It is visible in the displacement of Indigenous families from forest land, in the saltwater seeping into the wells of Sundarbans villages as sea levels inch upward, and in the farmers of Vidarbha caught between debt and drought.


The encyclical’s concept of integral ecology — the insistence that environmental health and human health cannot be treated as separate concerns — resonates with particular force in a country where so many lives are woven directly into the fabric of the natural world.

Mental health, still insufficiently acknowledged in India’s public health conversation, adds another layer. Farmers who have lost multiple harvests carry a grief and anxiety that does not lift with the next season.

Communities repeatedly displaced by cyclones or floods lose not just property but the psychological ground of home and continuity. Young people in cities and villages alike speak of an unease about their futures that goes beyond ordinary worry.

Eco-anxiety is real, and in India, it is entangled with economic precarity in ways that make it especially difficult to absorb.

None of this is without possibility. India has shown, in solar energy expansion, in community watershed programs, and in mangrove restoration along vulnerable coastlines, that it can act with both ambition and local intelligence.

The question is whether climate action is understood and pursued as a health imperative, not merely an environmental or economic one.

Policies that reduce air pollution protect lungs. Investments in drought-resistant crops reduce malnutrition. Urban greening cools cities and improves mental well-being. These are not separate agendas. They are the same agenda.

India’s climate story is global in its causes and intensely local in its consequences. It is felt in the body of a child coughing through a haze-thickened night and in the hands of a farmer reading a sky that no longer speaks the same language.

The people least responsible for this crisis are absorbing its worst effects with the fewest resources to recover. Responding to that reality with the urgency it demands is not only a matter of smart policy. It is a matter of justice, and on that count, the world still has a great deal to answer for.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

Dr. Fr. John Singarayar

Dr. Fr. John Singarayar, SVD, is a member of the Society of the Divine Word, India Mumbai Province, and holds a doctorate in Anthropology. He is the author of seven books and a regular contributor to academic conferences and scholarly publications in the fields of sociology, anthropology, tribal studies, spirituality, and mission studies. He currently serves at the Community and Human Resources Development Centre in Tala, Maharashtra.

 

UCF expert plays key role in international research to combat dengue fever, zika

As a mosquito-borne virus expert, UCF Assistant Professor Dr. James Earnest is leveraging his knowledge to lead two research projects studying immune responses to the dengue and Zika viruses.

UCF College of Medicine

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From left to right: UCF research associate Daniel Limonta,UCF Assistant Professor James Earnest and biomedical sciences doctoral student Bruno Pinheiro ’25.

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Credit: Photo by UCF College of Medicine.

Nearly half of the world’s citizens live in areas with a risk of catching dengue fever, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the mosquito-borne illness rapidly spreads, especially in the Americas and Caribbean, a UCF College of Medicine researcher is playing a crucial role in finding solutions.

Dr. James Earnest, an assistant professor at the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, is leading two new research projects to examine how humans build an immune response to dengue and the Zika virus over time, in pursuit of creating better preventative measures.

Tackling a Global Problem

Both dengue and Zika are carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which has expanded its habitat from Africa to tropical, subtropical and even temperate areas worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, dengue infections in humans climbed from 505,430 in 2000 to 14.6 million in 2024, an increase of more than 2,700%.

Dengue can be asymptomatic or cause severe pain, fatigue and high fever. Repeated infections can be fatal.

Since 2017, there have been few cases of Zika recorded in the U.S., but the disease persists sporadically in Africa, the Americas and Asia. The virus’ biggest health concern is for pregnant women because contracting Zika can increase risks for serious congenital birth defects.

While people in Mexico and Uganda may benefit from this research, Florida’s location as a worldwide travel destination adds to the growing need for solutions. U.S. dengue cases are on the rise and have been reported in Florida, California, Texas and Hawaii. Most are related to travel. Dengue is also prevalent in Puerto Rico.

“With more favorable temperatures and with people traveling around the globe these days, the threat to the U.S. is growing over time,” Dr. Earnest said. “I think, especially here in Florida, the potential for these mosquitoes to live in these areas and start transmitting these diseases in the very near future is high. UCF recognizes that this is an important avenue of research for this region, and so we want to be the leaders at looking at these viruses.”

How the UCF Research Works

Dr. Earnest’s lab is focused on how the immune system responds to mosquito-borne viruses. Before arriving at UCF in 2024, he tracked dengue via longitudinal sampling in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Dr. Earnest is collaborating with the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) through a five-year $970,813 subcontract, part of a larger grant awarded to UVRI from Wellcome, a London-based charitable organization that supports science to solve urgent health challenges. The project aims to study immune system and antibody responses to dengue and Zika in large cohorts of people in Uganda and in Mexico.

UCF will also collaborate with Emory University on a $578,157 grant from the National Institutes of Health, with Dr. Earnest subcontracted to Emory to study whether combining two current dengue inoculations used in Brazil gives humans better protection against repeat infections.

“It's important that we understand what good and bad immune responses look like to these viruses,” Dr. Earnest said. “When we know those factors, then we can try to steer people in the right direction so that their antibodies will protect them from disease.”

Dr. Earnest will coordinate with teams in other countries to regularly collect blood samples and measure antibody production to get a comprehensive look at how different people’s bodies react to dengue and Zika over time. The samples will be collected and processed in Mexico and Uganda, and Earnest will analyze the results in his lab.

“I think what's unique about this work is that we’re following people over time and not necessarily just when they get sick,” Dr. Earnest said.

His research focuses on B cells, which are white blood cells that make antibodies and help the body remember how to fight infections. By tracking how people’s B cells change over time, his team aims to understand how immune responses differ across regions.

In a related project with Emory, the lab will identify the most effective memory B cells and antibodies induced by two existing methods of inoculation for dengue, then test whether combining those methods in Brazilian trial participants produces a stronger immune response.

Students Aim to Save Lives Through Lab Work

With this new research, Dr. Earnest’s lab has welcomed two new UCF students who have personal experience with dengue and Zika.

Maiesha Mahmood, a second-year biotechnology master’s student, is from Bangladesh, where the threat of dengue looms.

“I have been around dengue a lot growing up,” Mahmood said. “I know people who have been in hospital with severe forms of dengue, and people who've passed away suddenly. People become scared of mosquitos and dengue.”

She said she hopes UCF’s research will someday save lives.

“Back in Bangladesh, we don't really have a lot of facilities that can support virology research,” she said. “It was a huge opportunity to be able to come here and be able to work with Dr. Earnest. I want to continue looking into these kinds of viruses and find a way to help people who keep suffering from these diseases.”

Bruno Pinheiro ’25, a first-year Ph.D. candidate, joined Dr. Earnest’s lab to further his education and hopes research will help people close to him.

“My family is from Brazil and so Zika was a very big thing for them,” said Pinheiro, who earned his bachelor’s degree in biotechnology “It’s great to work on something that you can feel will impact the community that you're a part of.”

Researcher Credentials:

Dr. Earnest joined UCF’s College of Medicine in 2024 as an assistant professor in the Immunity and Pathogenesis Division. He earned his doctorate in microbiology and immunology from Loyola University Chicago in 2017. He performed postdoctoral research at Washington University in St. Louis studying antibody responses to mosquito-borne viruses and Emory University where he managed clinical field trials in Latin America.

Funding and Disclosure:

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01AI186860. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Climate Change Threatens Human Health Across Southern Africa – Analysis

Climate change should not only be understood as an environmental phenomenon, but also as a critical and systemic threat to human health.

April 3, 2026 
By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

Scientific evidence indicates that climate change is affecting the essential determinants of health, such as clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food and secure shelter. This ratchets up existing health burdens and creates new ones across the world.

Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is projected to cause about 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress. This will have direct costs for global health systems. More importantly, regions with weaker health infrastructure, particularly in low‑income countries, will bear the most severe impacts.

To address the issue effectively, we must first understand the mechanisms through which climate change affects health. This process has many interrelated dimensions.

To begin with, rising global temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, such as heat waves, floods and droughts, directly increase morbidity and mortality. Indirectly, this also disrupts food and water systems and increases mental health stresses arising from displacement, as well as the loss of livelihoods.


Climate change can also be viewed as a threat multiplier. On the one hand, it exacerbates health risks already experienced by vulnerable populations. And on the other, it disproportionately affects those least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.

Recent scientific analyses further highlight the emerging dimensions of climate‑related health risks. A study recently published in The Lancet Global Health projects that climate change is contributing to a growing physical inactivity crisis by reducing safe opportunities for outdoor movement as temperatures rise. This inactivity, linked to chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, could result in hundreds of thousands of additional premature deaths annually by mid‑century.

Within this global context, Southern Africa, one of the world’s most vulnerable regions, exemplifies how climate change magnifies existing health vulnerabilities and reveals structural gaps.

The Southern African Development Community countries — including Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe — contribute an insignificant share of global greenhouse gas emissions yet face disproportionate climate‑induced health risks due to high socioeconomic vulnerability.


Projections highlight that Southern Africa is experiencing warming at a rate higher than the global average, with potential temperature increases up to several degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

Such warming increases heat stress and susceptibility to heat‑related illnesses, particularly among outdoor laborers, children and the elderly. It also affects other vulnerable populations that lack access to adequate cooling infrastructure and healthcare support. Heat stress not only leads to acute morbidity, including heat exhaustion and heat stroke, but also contributes to renal and cardiovascular stress.

Infectious diseases are another pressing concern. Changing temperature and precipitation patterns expand the potential range of diseases such as malaria and dengue. Furthermore, compromised water and food systems due to droughts or flood damage heighten risks of waterborne and foodborne illnesses. These illnesses disproportionately affect infants, children and other vulnerable populations.

Another issue is that environmental degradation and food insecurity in one nation can strain regional markets and cross‑border supply chains. This impacts food access and economic stability in neighboring countries. Such ripple effects show that health security, when it comes to climate change, cannot be confined to one place.

Unfortunately, mental health burdens are also often overlooked in climate discussions. The mental health consequences of climate change warrant considerable attention. Repeated exposure to extreme weather events, loss of homes and livelihoods, and chronic stress contribute to heightened rates of anxiety, depression and other psychosocial disorders.

The interplay of climate change with human health in Southern Africa points to another important issue: the transboundary dimension of climate health risks. Health challenges triggered by climate change in one region or national context do not remain isolated. Instead, they reverberate regionally and globally through paths such as migration, infectious disease spread and economic interconnectedness.


In addition, displacement due to climate disasters can result in cross‑border movements that stress regional health systems. This interconnectedness again affirms that climate change is not solely an environmental or economic challenge but a global public health concern requiring a collective response.

As a result, it is critical to bring up the principles of climate justice and equity. Those people most vulnerable to climate‑induced health impacts — often in low‑income countries or marginalized communities — have contributed the least to the historical accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet they bear disproportionate health burdens, highlighting a fundamental inequity.

High‑emitting nations should provide assistance to these countries, including financial support and investments in climate‑resilient infrastructure and health services. In general, we should integrate health considerations into climate policy at national and international levels as well.

In a nutshell, the nexus between climate change and human health should not be overlooked. In Southern Africa, as in many vulnerable regions, climate change is amplifying health risks. These risks include the physiological, infectious, nutritional and psychosocial domains, with many effects that extend beyond national borders.

As a result, it is vital to recognize climate change as a central determinant of health. And we need genuine international cooperation rooted in the principles of climate justice. Without such collective action, the health consequences of climate change will continue to worsen.

This article was published at Arab News

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. X: @Dr_Rafizadeh

 

Climate change is fueling disease outbreaks

Stanford University

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Diseases historically absent from the United States have been showing up in Florida, Texas, California and other U.S. states in recent years. To understand why, look to Peru. That’s where researchers from Stanford and other institutions analyzed the connection between a cyclone and a massive outbreak of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease that can cause fever, rash, and life-threatening symptoms like hemorrhage and shock. Their findings, published March 17 in One Earth, reveal that warmer, wetter weather linked to climate change is making disease epidemics more likely.

"Health impacts of climate change aren't something we're waiting for,” said study lead author Mallory Harris, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Maryland who conducted the research as a PhD student in biology at Stanford. “They're happening now."

Standing water + heat = sick people

Dengue fever, transmitted by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, sickens an estimated tens of millions of people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization, and has surged more than 10-fold globally since 2000. A 2023 cyclone and coastal El Niño in a normally dry region of Peru was followed by a dengue fever outbreak 10 times larger than normal. 

Using a statistical technique developed in economics, the researchers asked what share of this historic outbreak was due to the unusual 2023 weather, by modeling what would have happened without the storm. In collaboration with scientists at the Peruvian Ministry of Health and the Latin American Center of Excellence in Climate Change and Health, the team estimated that 60% of dengue cases in the hardest hit districts were directly caused by extreme rainfall and warm temperatures during the cyclone. That translates to roughly 22,000 additional people falling ill who otherwise would not have.

The link goes like this: heavy rains flood low-lying areas, knock out water and sanitation infrastructure, and create pools of water ideal for breeding Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. Warm weather turbocharges mosquito breeding and disease transmission processes. By comparison, cooler areas hit by the cyclone saw no significant effect of extreme precipitation on dengue incidence. 

“While we often observe large dengue outbreaks following extreme weather events, this is the first time scientists have been able to pinpoint the role of climate change and precisely measure the impact of a particular storm on dengue—one of the most rapidly-growing infectious diseases,” said study senior author Erin Mordecai, an associate professor of biology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and co-lead of the Disease Ecology in a Changing World program based at the Center for Human and Planetary Health.

Stanford climate modelers Jared Trok and Noah Diffenbaugh then analyzed simulations comparing precipitation in March across 1965-2014 to a pre-industrial baseline. The result: extreme precipitation conditions like those seen in 2023 are now 31 percent more likely in northwestern Peru than they were before industrialization. When combined with warming temperatures, the probability of climate conditions like those that fueled the 2023 dengue epidemic has nearly tripled.

Fighting a tiny enemy

The findings are both a warning and the seed of a possible solution. Targeted mosquito control and vaccination in high-risk urban districts could all blunt the impact of a mosquito-borne disease surge, according to the researchers. Investments in urban flood resilience, such as better drainage, sturdier housing, and more reliable water infrastructure could also help stave off the threat.

"This research provides Peru's Ministry of Health an initial estimate to quantify the specific health impacts of extreme climatic events,” said study coauthor Andrés Lescano of the Latin American Center of Excellence for Climate Change and Health. “That can be used as a reference to advocate for greater public health investments in preparation and response."

Similar analyses could be applied to hurricanes, monsoons, and other extreme events around the world. They could help governments prepare before mosquito-borne outbreaks take hold, and better understand the impact climate change is already having on human health.

“As extreme weather events become more frequent with climate change, we need to think strategically and act decisively to prevent mosquito borne epidemics,” Harris said.

 

 

Mordecai is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; a faculty fellow in the Center for Innovation in Global Health, the Center for Human and Planetary Health, and the King Center on Global Development; and a member of Bio-X. Trok is a Ph.D. student in Earth system science at Stanford. Diffenbaugh is the William Wrigley Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and the Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education

Coauthors of "Extreme precipitation, exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, drove Peru's record-breaking 2023 dengue outbreak,” also include Kevin Martel and César Munayco of the Peruvian Ministry of Health and the Latin American Center of Excellence for Climate Change and Health; Mercy Borbor Cordova of the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral in Ecuador.

The study was funded by the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Scholarship; the National Institutes of Health; Montgomery County, Maryland; the National Science Foundation; the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health; the King Center on Global Development; the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; the Fogarty International Center; the National Institute on Aging, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

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Journal

One Earth

Article Title

Extreme precipitation, exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, drove Peru’s record-breaking 2023 dengue outbreak

Article Publication Date

17-Mar-2026

Climate lessons from the last interglacial for today’s climate change

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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By integrating ancient geological archives with high-tech climate simulations, researchers identified that the Levant experienced a 20% increase in rainfall during the Last Interglacial peak. The study reveals that this wetting was driven by a "thermodynamic" shift, where a warmer atmosphere held more moisture that was then dumped into the desert by intensified Red Sea Troughs. These findings suggest that such localized, high-intensity weather patterns transformed the arid southern Levant into a viable migration path for early humans moving out of Africa.

For modern residents of the Levant, the "Red Sea Trough" usually brings a brief, dusty transition between seasons. But 127,000 years ago, this same weather pattern may have been the literal key to human history.

A new study led by PhD student Efraim Bril, Prof. Adi Torfstein and Dr. Assaf Hochman from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published in Climate of the Past, reveals that during the Last Interglacial (LIG) peak, the Levant wasn’t just a dry bridge between continents, it was a dynamic more relatively wet conditions fuelled by intense, localized rain. This shift in ancient weather likely provided the water sources necessary for early humans to successfully migrate "out of Africa".

The Last Interglacial (roughly 129,000 to 116,000 years ago) was a period of global warmth, with higher sea levels and temperatures than today. While the region was generally arid, geological "clues", ranging from Dead Sea sediment cores to ancient cave formations in the Negev, show evidence of brief, extremely wet phases.

"Proxy-based reconstructions indicate that during the peak of the LIG, the southern Levant experienced relatively wetter conditions," the researchers note. But how did a desert suddenly get enough water to support a human migration?

To solve this, Bril et al. used advanced climate models (PMIP4) to simulate how rain-bearing weather systems behaved 127,000 years ago. They focused on the two primary systems that still govern our rain today:

• Cyprus Lows: The winter storms that bring most of Israel’s annual rainfall from the Mediterranean.
• Red Sea Troughs: Systems that usually peak in autumn and can pull moisture from the tropics.

The study found that during the LIG peak, these systems were roughly 20% more productive than they are in modern times.

The most striking finding involves the southern Levant. While northern Israel and Lebanon saw more winter rain from Cyprus Lows, the arid south (areas like Eilat and the Negev) relied on a "turbo-charged" Red Sea Trough.

The researchers discovered that this wasn't necessarily because these storms happened more often, but because they were physically different. Essentially, the ancient Levant became wetter because a warmer atmosphere acts like a larger sponge. During the peak of the Last Interglacial, significantly higher temperatures, especially in the summer, increased the air's capacity to hold water vapor.

When a Red Sea Trough moved through the region during the year, it had access to a much larger reservoir of atmospheric moisture than it does today. This physical change in the air, rather than just a change in wind patterns, was the primary reason for the intense rainfall that transformed the southern desert into a more viable landscape.

Beyond historical curiosity, this research provides a vital "mirror" for our future. As we face modern global warming, understanding how natural variability once transformed the Levant’s water balance is crucial for predicting future climate impacts.

The study highlights that even in a generally dry region, specific weather types can become significantly more intense due to rising temperatures, a pattern we may already be starting to see in 21st-century projections. By integrating ancient geological "proxies" with high-tech modelling, Bril et al have mapped the path of our ancestors and, perhaps, the weather challenges of our descendants.

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Journal

Climate of the Past

DOI

10.5194/cp-22-339-2026 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Hydroclimatic variability and weather type characteristics in the Levant during the last interglacial