With climate change’s effects threatening human health, climate services – a powerful but underused tool – are gaining new momentum thanks to a major partnership aiming to scale life-saving solutions worldwide. 

As the world enters another year of record-breaking temperatures, the stakes for human health have never been more clear. From extreme heat to shifting patterns of infectious disease, the climate crisis is no longer a future threat. It is a present emergency, and one that is testing the limits of human survivability.

In 2023 alone, more than 60,000 people died due to extreme heat across Europe, according to research published in Nature Medicine. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded, and the first to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, while each of the past ten years ranks among the ten hottest in history. The health implications are stacking up and staggering.

But we are not without options. While mitigating climate change is the highest priority, adapting to the changes that we cannot avoid is essential for protecting health and well-being. One of the most effective ways we can protect people today  is by integrating weather and climate information into health planning and response efforts. It sounds simple, but what are known as “climate services” are not being used in the health sector even though they can help decision-makers act early and save lives.

When tools and approaches like extreme heat early warning systems, storm alerts, and disease outbreak forecasts are integrated into adaptation and early action plans across health and related sectors—from nutrition to emergency response—they help professionals and communities prepare in advance, rather than scrambling after the damage is done.

In Viet Nam, for example, health authorities are using environmental information and climate models to forecast where and when dengue outbreaks may occur up to six months in advance. This gives public health agencies time to act, reducing disease spread and improving water resource planning. In Mauritania, a drought early warning system triggered cash transfers to more than 47,000 vulnerable households in 2022 to help families avoid hunger and malnutrition before conditions worsened.

Yet these success stories remain the exception, rather than the rule.

You wouldn’t fly a plane without consulting the weather. You wouldn’t plant crops without looking at weather patterns. Yet less than a quarter of national health ministries actually use that information to monitor climate-related health risks. Even fewer have the trained staff or financial resources to make full use of it. This disconnect puts lives at risk, and it is not something the health sector can fix alone.

Climate risks cut across all sectors. So must our response. Health ministries need to work hand in hand with meteorological offices, environmental agencies, disaster managers, and finance departments. Building that kind of collaboration takes leadership, sustained partnerships, long-term investment in innovation and technology, and people who can navigate both the science of climate and the realities of public health.

That is the goal of the WMO-WHO Climate and Health Joint Programme, created to help countries build climate-informed health systems and bridge the gap between data and action. Progress is underway, but the pace must pick up.

The human and financial costs of inaction are growing, and climate change is already reversing hard-won progress on global health. With healthcare systems projected to incur an additional $1.1 trillion in costs by 2050 due to climate-induced impacts, there’s a political and economic imperative to make investments that mitigate these losses. By prioritizing climate informed planning, early warning systems, cross-sector coordination, and workforce training, we can protect communities and build health systems that are ready for what lies ahead.

On the sidelines of the 78th World Health Assembly, Wellcome and The Rockefeller Foundation announced a new partnership to accelerate this work and catalyze action and further investments. Backed by US$11.6 million in initial funding, the partnership will advance the work of the WHO-WMO Joint Programme and partners to support and scale up climate services for health around the world.

We envision a future where frontline communities and health providers can anticipate and mitigate crises and not be caught off guard by climate extremes, where every country can use climate science to protect communities, and where health is central to building climate resilience.

To achieve that future, we must treat climate services for health as essential public infrastructure rather than an afterthought or pilot project, and ensure they become a fundamental part of how we protect human life in a warming world.

The climate crisis is already a health crisis. It is time we invested in solutions that match the scale of the challenge.

Joy Shumake-Guillemot
Lead
WMO-WHO Climate and Health Joint Programme

Manisha Bhinge
Vice President, Health
The Rockefeller Foundation

Madeleine Thomson
Head of Impacts and Adaptation
Wellcome