Highlights
- •Warmer temperatures reduce sleep globally, amplifying the risk of insufficient sleep
- •The elderly, women, and residents of lower-income countries are impacted most
- •Those living in warmer climates lose more sleep per degree of temperature rise
- •Climate change is projected to unequally erode sleep, widening global inequalities
Summary
Ambient temperatures are rising worldwide, with the greatest increases recorded at
night. Concurrently, the prevalence of insufficient sleep is rising in many populations.
Yet it remains unclear whether warmer-than-average temperatures causally impact objective
measures of sleep globally. Here, we link billions of repeated sleep measurements
from sleep-tracking wristbands comprising over 7 million sleep records (n = 47,628)
across 68 countries to local daily meteorological data. Controlling for individual,
seasonal, and time-varying confounds, increased temperature shortens sleep primarily
through delayed onset, increasing the probability of insufficient sleep. The temperature
effect on sleep loss is substantially larger for residents from lower-income countries
and older adults, and females are affected more than males. Those in hotter regions
experience comparably more sleep loss per degree of warming, suggesting limited adaptation.
By 2099, suboptimal temperatures may erode 50–58 h of sleep per person-year, with
climate change producing geographic inequalities that scale with future emissions.
Graphical abstract
Graphical Abstract
Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Published: May 20, 2022
Accepted:
April 26,
2022
Received in revised form:
March 14,
2022
Received:
October 30,
2021
Identification
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© 2022 Elsevier Inc.
