A study published in The Lancet Planetary Health has found that people aged 60 and over experience health risks from heat exposure at significantly lower temperature thresholds than younger populations, according to research led by Stanford University academics.
The research highlights that older adults are physiologically more vulnerable to extreme heat due to reduced sweating, increased cardiac strain, and diminished blood vessel function. Previous studies failed to account for age-specific vulnerabilities, instead applying heat stress thresholds developed for younger people across all age groups, thereby underestimating risks for seniors. According to the findings, older adults face harmful heat stress at 1.5C of warming above preindustrial levels, compared with 4C for younger adults.
The study warns that uncompensable heat stress—where the body loses its capacity to cool itself—will affect increasingly large populations as global temperatures continue rising. Each additional degree of global heating exposes roughly one billion more people to at least 180 hours of uncompensable heat stress annually, with the burden disproportionately affecting older populations. With projections indicating the global population aged 60 and over will double to 2.1 billion by 2050, low- and middle-income countries such as India and Pakistan face particular challenges.
In Britain, the UK Health Security Agency recently expressed concern that current temperatures this year—marked by five heatwaves in some regions—may result in the nation’s highest annual heat-related death toll on record. A four-day heatwave in May and an eight-day heatwave in June together caused 2,877 excess deaths, nearly double the 1,504 recorded during the summer of 2025. Health officials note that older patients increasingly present with dehydration, collapse, and exacerbated chronic conditions including heart and kidney disease during heat events, complicating clinical management when elderly bodies show reduced temperature regulation efficiency.
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