Vietnam in the face of extreme heat events

Some of the greatest impacts of climate change worldwide arise from increasing extreme weather events, including hot temperature extremes. As global warming is projected to further intensify in future decades, Vietnam will face increasing extreme heat events. In order to contribute to identify potential knowledge gaps on this issue and better inform adaptation policies, we performed a literature review of 61 documents published between 2005 and 2024 and dealing with extreme tempe-ratures and heat stress in Vietnam. We found that actually the two main topics of these documents are the urban heat island effect and the negative health impacts of high temperatures, but without taking climate change into account. Climatological studies focusing on hot extremes in Vietnam appear rather rare. The few studies identified all report increasing trends over the past decades, and the rare studies providing climate projections for Vietnam specifically or for vietnamese cities all point out to further increases. Hence, dangerous hot weather could occur up to several months per year. Overall, our review high-lights the need for further research on this issue in Vietnam in order to better anticipate potential heat-related damages and build relevant adaptation policies.