Extreme heat risks to pregnancy driven by climate change: France
2020 to 2024
We counted the number of days with temperatures warmer than 95% of temperatures observed at a given location (also referred to as temperatures above the 95th percentile) — a threshold which research1 shows can bring increased risk of preterm birth. We define these extremely hot days as “pregnancy heat-risk days.”
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During the past five years, France experienced an average of 17 additional pregnancy heat-risk days each year.
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Climate change accounted for more than 60% of the average annual number of pregnancy heat-risk days in France during 2020 to 2024 (17 of 28 days).
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In Paris, 65% of the pregnancy heat-risk days experienced annually in the past five years were added by climate change (17 out of 26 days).
Explore data for provinces across France in the interactive map below.
Provinces with the most pregnancy heat-risk days added by climate change
1We chose this percentile based on peer-reviewed research from Kuehn et al. (2017), Wang et al. (2013), Wang et al. (2024), and McElroy et al. (2022).