An emerging argument is that since humans can readily adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is less need to pursue aggressive emissions mitigation strategies. As temperature adaptation is a function of repeated exposure over time, we need empirical approaches that can depict individuals' temperature history to rigorously examine this claim. Using a longitudinal dataset representative of China, we construct lifetime temperature exposure unique to each individual based on their birth-dates, birth-locations, and movement history. We show that a 1°C increase in individualized temperature anomalies cause a 2% decrease in 1 standard deviation (S.D.) of well-being, where most of the impacts are driven by "hotter-than-expected" weather. In turn, while the adverse impacts of future temperature changes wane after accommodating for adaptation, acclimatization is unlikely to keep pace with future temperature increases except in the net-zero emissions scenario, indicating that stringent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cuts are still needed even in this less-pessimistic scenario.
Keywords: Climatology; Earth sciences; Environmental health; Environmental science.
© 2023 The Authors.