The multidimensional impacts of heatwaves on human ecosystems: A systematic literature review and future research direction

Global warming continues to exacerbate heatwave severity, duration, and frequency causing impacts that threaten humanity, and the physical and anthropogenic environment. Although research on heatwave impacts has increased, the majority of studies have focused on social effects relegating to the background other crucial impacts. Such a narrow focus on social impacts limits the realization of a thorough understanding of the net impacts of heatwaves. Using the PRISMA protocol, this study conducts a review of 127 peer-reviewed articles to provide a systematic and comprehensive taxonomy of heatwave impacts highlighting key policies, adaptation strategies and barriers. The review found traceable evidence of heatwaves impact on human and environmental ecosystems via 11 thematic pathways namely, health, food crisis/water shortage, infrastructure/energy use, disaster hazard displacement, labour productivity, living cost, industry loss, infrastructure cost, water resources/marine life, vegetation/wildlife, and ozone/air/particulate pollution grouped under social, economic, and environmental dimensions. These multidimensional impacts of heatwaves necessitate stakeholder synergies in pooling resources and integrating diverse types of information to tackle impacts and develop inclusive policies and adaptation strategies for better heat resilience. • Global warming exacerbates heatwave severity, duration, and frequency. • The study reviews 127 articles to develop a taxonomy of heatwave impacts. • Heatwaves impact human and environmental ecosystems via 11 thematic pathways. • Review contributes to developing inclusive heatwave policies and adaptation strategies.