Fig. 4: Climate change projected impacts.

a Estimates indicate that heatwave-induced total aggregated damages will grow steadily at the European level during the next four decades, peaking in the 2055–64 decade with annually expected GDP losses below −1.1%. This represents approximately a five-fold increase in losses, compared to what has been observed in the period 1981-2010. Each boxplot shows the interannual distribution of total European, annually estimated impacts over different time periods. In-depth analysed years (2003, 2010, 2015, and 2018) are highlighted. Boxes cover the interquartile range (IQR, 25th–75th percentiles) of the damage distribution and whiskers show the values contained within ±1.5⋅IQR. Thick solid lines denote the estimated median (multi-model median in the climate change analysis) GDP impact over each time period. Observations for the period 2001–2020 correspond to the annual simulations carried out over the period 2001–2010 together with the analysis of years 2015 and 2018. To simulate the economic model over the period 2021–2034, regional-level time series of labour productivity shocks were obtained by linearly interpolating average results over the historical period (1981–2010) and projected multi-model averages over the decade 2035–2044. b Holding fixed the current economic sectoral composition, heat damages will grow in all areas, especially in southern countries, more vulnerable to heatwaves due to their high heat and economic exposure (refer also to Supplementary Fig. 2). Each red-coloured dot represents the 10-year, multi-model average projected GDP impact for each country.