Heat-health preparedness
Explore how S2S information can support heat-stress monitoring, early warning, and public-health readiness.
The SAGE Health Task Team explores how sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecasts can support health preparedness and climate-sensitive risk management. The team connects climate prediction, public-health research, early warning, epidemiological modelling, and operational climate services to examine links between S2S information and heat stress, infectious disease risk, emergency planning, and health-system resilience. Its role within SAGE is to identify where forecast information can support earlier public-health action, strengthen communication of uncertainty, and improve climate-informed preparedness for health risks that evolve over weeks to seasons.
Explore how S2S information can support heat-stress monitoring, early warning, and public-health readiness.
Connect forecast information with infectious disease surveillance, vector-borne disease preparedness, and health risk modelling.
Identify where forecasts at weekly to seasonal timescales can support health-sector preparedness and emergency-response decisions.
Work with public health agencies, researchers, humanitarian actors, and operational climate service providers to understand actionable forecast needs.
Improve how forecast uncertainty, skill, and limits are communicated for health preparedness decisions.
Support climate service approaches that strengthen health resilience and practical use of climate information.
A review of past and current applications of subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecasts for health, identifying key use cases, operational examples, and research gaps.
Interviews with researchers, public health agencies, climate service providers, and operational users to understand current practice, user needs, and barriers to S2S adoption.
An international survey of climate and health practitioners to assess awareness, current use of S2S forecasts, decision-making needs, and priorities for future climate services.
Compilation and evaluation of existing S2S forecast visualisations and communication approaches, with a focus on clarity, uncertainty communication, and health decision support.
Development of links with international climate and health initiatives through collaborative activities to strengthen knowledge exchange and identify opportunities for operational implementation.
A review summarising the current evidence base, applications, and research priorities for using S2S forecasts in climate-sensitive health decision-making.
A report describing where S2S forecasts can support health preparedness, early warning, emergency planning, and climate-informed public health services.
A summary of stakeholder perspectives, user requirements, and recommendations for improving the uptake of S2S information across the health sector.
A curated collection of examples illustrating different approaches to communicating S2S forecast information for health applications, including good practice for uncertainty communication.
Organisation of webinars, workshops, and knowledge exchange sessions to share findings, build partnerships between the climate and health communities, and support the development of future collaborative activities.
Open the team directory, then select an individual member to view more information.
Team members are shown with the affiliation and country information provided in the Health Task Team document. Select a member for biography, expertise, contact information and profile links where provided.
EpiOutlook: A seasonal forecasting platform for climate-sensitive infectious disease risk
Tompkins, A. M., Lowe, R., Nissan, H., Martiny, N., Roucou, P., Thomson, M. C., & Nakazawa, T. (2026). Predicting climate impacts on health at subseasonal-to-seasonal timescales. In A. W. Robertson & F. Vitart (Eds.), Sub-seasonal to seasonal prediction: The gap between weather and climate forecasting (2nd ed., pp. 721–752). Elsevier. DOI