The German Heat-Mortality Panel (GHMP): A Synthetic Panel Dataset for Regional Climate Impact Analysis (2015–2024)

Abstract The intersection of climate econometrics and public health policy faces a persistent infrastructure gap in Germany. While meteorological data are available at high spatial resolution, administrative mortality statistics remain fragmented, siloed by federal state agencies, and often delayed by up to 24 months. This data disconnect hinders the timely empirical evaluation of municipal Hitzeaktionspläne (Heat Action Plans) and obfuscates the regional heterogeneity of climate damages. To bridge this gap, this article introduces the GHMP (German Heat-Mortality Panel), a balanced panel dataset covering the 16 Federal States (Bundesländer) from 2015 to 2024. By harmonizing official national mortality records from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) with state-specific temperature anomalies from the German Meteorological Service (DWD), a population-weighted imputation algorithm is applied to estimate regional excess mortality correlated with thermal stress. This “synthetic panel” approach provides a robust, open-access proxy for researchers to test difference-in-differences models, benchmark regional climate vulnerability, and teach econometric methods. The dataset reveals a significant North–South thermal gradient, with the state of Saarland consistently exhibiting the highest thermal load and documents a structural break in the thermal baseline beginning in 2022.