Heat exposure constitutes a major threat for European workers, with significant impacts on the workers’ health and productivity. Climate projections over the next decades show a continuous and accelerated warming over Europe together with longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves on regional and local scales. In this work, we assess the increased risk in future occupational heat stress levels using the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), an index adopted by the International Standards Organization as regulatory index to measure the heat exposure of working people. Our results show that, in large parts of Europe, future heat exposure will indeed exceed critical levels for physically active humans far more often than in today’s climate, and labour productivity might be largely reduced in southern Europe. European industries should adapt to the projected changes to prevent major consequences for the workers’ health and to preserve economic productivity.

中文翻译：

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夏季环境热量暴露不断增加–对欧洲劳动力的未来威胁

热量暴露对欧洲工人构成了主要威胁，对工人的健康和生产力产生了重大影响。未来几十年的气候预测表明，欧洲持续且加速的变暖以及区域和地方范围内更长，更强烈，更频繁的热浪。在这项工作中，我们使用湿球温度（WBGT）来评估未来职业热应激水平中增加的风险，WBGT是国际标准组织采用的一种指标，用于衡量劳动者的热量暴露。我们的结果表明，在欧洲大部分地区，未来的热量暴露确实会比今天的气候更频繁地超过从事体力活动的人类的临界水平，并且南欧的劳动生产率可能会大大降低。