We measure climate impacts using calculations: How many degrees above average will today’s temperature be? How strong were a hurricane’s winds? What was the extent of a recent flood? We have invested in tools and infrastructure to better map these occurrences, model them and, hopefully, provide support for policymaking and social justice efforts.
But the silent yet significant effects of climate change on the brain are only now starting to be understood. And the findings are unsettling.
We, the authors, have spent decades studying Greenland’s melting ice sheet (Marco) or following what heat and pollution do to the roughly 86 billion neurons each of us carries in our brain (Burcin). Our journeys have led us to similar conclusions: the most damaging effects of climate change in humans are also the ones our society is least equipped to recognize and address.
In this era of advancing AI, when everyone is debating the nature of “intelligence,” we have forgotten that our brains run well only within a narrow band of temperature. What happens to the brain once that temperature threshold is crossed is often overlooked in discussions of climate change.
Extreme heat has been tied to worsening of symptoms and increased hospitalizations across a startling range of neurological and psychiatric conditions. The same soot that scars the lungs may cross into brain tissue and speed the machinery of aging or increase the risk of disease. According to the State of Global Air 2025 Report, one out of four dementia deaths in 2023 were attributable to air pollution. Children are the most vulnerable of all, because their brains are still developing—and construction of a complex system like the brain is fragile work. Even being exposed to a traumatic climate event in the womb, such as Superstorm Sandy, may change the structure of developing brains, resulting in higher risk of neurobehavioral disorders later in life.
The most damaging effects of climate change in humans are also the ones our society is least equipped to recognize and address.
None of this is visible to our eyes. This is not only due to the nature of the medical conditions, but also the lack of metrics, criteria and tools available to address this issue. The suffering is real but the cause and condition are often undiagnosed, isolating those in pain and silencing their voices. A teenager who cannot concentrate through a September heat wave in an apartment with no air conditioning; a grandfather whose dementia worsens during a long blackout: These scenarios are not projections. They are happening all around us.
Neuroclimate vulnerability is the susceptibility of the human brain and nervous system to the adverse effects of climate change. This is shaped by many factors such as age, an existing neurological or psychiatric condition, exposure (how much heat, how much pollution, how many nights without relief, for how long?) and by the socioeconomic conditions that determine whether a person can cool down, breathe clean air, sleep or reach a doctor. For those living with multiple factors, the risk multiplies exponentially.
We hold decades of data on how climate change melts ice and a growing record of its toll on the heart and the lungs. Yet for the brain, we have almost nothing comparable. The greatest challenge is time: some consequences emerge quickly as changes in mood, sleep, cognition or mental health, while others, including dementia and Parkinson’s disease, may begin years or even decades before symptoms become visible. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to connect today’s environmental exposures with tomorrow’s disease. Worse still, the communities already most exposed to neuroclimate risk are also the most absent from the clinical studies, environmental monitoring and datasets on which tomorrow’s policies will be built.
This invisibility is not inevitable. The history of environmental justice teaches us that once the harm is named, it can be measured. If we can measure the harm, then we can act to reduce it. This is exactly where we need to focus.
No single discipline can solve neuroclimate vulnerability alone. That is why the International Neuro Climate Working Group was founded: to bring together neuroscientists, climate scientists, clinicians, public health experts, policymakers, economists, engineers, educators and communities with lived experience around a shared mission to understand how a changing climate affects the brain and, more importantly, how we can protect it. The goal is not only to document neuroclimate vulnerability, but also to help transform it into neuroclimate resilience.
Through initiatives such as the Brain Vulnerability and Resilience Index, we aim to develop practical tools that can identify those at greatest risk, monitor changes over time, promote and evaluate interventions, and help guide investments and policies where they are needed most. Alongside these efforts, we need shared methods, harmonized data, long-term studies and stronger collaborations that include the communities most affected by climate change.
Climate change is already reshaping our brains. The question is: Will we continue to measure its effects only after the damage is done? Or might we begin measuring them now, so we can act earlier, build resilience and change the trajectory for generations to come.
Marco Tedesco is a research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School, and an adjunct scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Burcin Ikiz is a neuroscientist working at the intersection of brain health, climate change, planetary health and global health policy. She is the founder and chair of the Neuro Climate Working Group and an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Columbia Climate School, Earth Institute or Columbia University.
