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Climate change and skin care are increasingly discussed together. Heat waves, air pollution, wildfire smoke, changing humidity and UV exposure are often followed by the same beauty advice: wear more SPF, use antioxidants, strengthen your skin barrier and switch to products designed for a changing climate.
Some of that advice makes sense. Some of it needs more context.
I have worked in environmental protection for more than 25 years, dealing with waste, wastewater, soil contamination and the movement of pollutants through the environment. I also make and study skincare formulations at home. Looking at climate change from both sides has made me interested in a slightly different question:
If the climate changes, what actually needs to change in skincare — our routine, our formulations, the ingredients we use, or the way the beauty industry produces and sells them?
There is another side to the story too. Climate change can affect the conditions in which botanical raw materials are grown and sourced, while skincare itself has an environmental footprint through ingredients, production, packaging, transport, use and disposal.
So in this article, I want to separate what the evidence supports from what has become part of the climate-beauty narrative — and look at what a changing climate really means for skin, cosmetic ingredients and the products we make and buy.
If you are interested in the broader environmental decisions behind skincare, my Sustainable Beauty Practices guide looks at those choices across the product life cycle.
What’s Actually Happening to Our Skin Out There?
Our skin is constantly responding to its surroundings. Temperature, humidity, UV radiation and air pollution can all influence skin function, but they do not act in the same way—or affect everyone equally.
That makes the relationship between climate change and skin more complicated than simply saying that a warmer planet means more skin damage.
Heat and Humidity
Temperature and humidity affect the environment directly around our skin. Heat can increase sweating and sebum production, while changes in humidity can influence skin hydration and transepidermal water loss. Hot conditions may also aggravate some existing inflammatory skin conditions.
But the effect depends on the conditions. A hot, humid summer is very different from hot, dry weather, and indoor air conditioning creates yet another environment.
For me, this is a more useful way to think about climate and skincare: not Is the planet getting warmer? but What has actually changed in the environment my skin is exposed to?
Air Pollution, Sunlight and Photo-Pollution
Air pollution and sunlight are often discussed as separate skincare problems, although our skin can be exposed to both at the same time.
Particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, ground-level ozone and other pollutants have been associated with oxidative stress, inflammation and extrinsic skin ageing. UV radiation can also generate oxidative stress and damage cellular components.
Researchers have therefore looked at their combined effects. The term photo-pollution describes the interaction between pollution and solar radiation rather than treating them as completely independent environmental stressors.
That does not mean that every pigmentation change, wrinkle or breakout can be blamed on pollution. It does mean that looking at combined environmental exposure may tell us more than treating sunlight and pollution as two unrelated beauty concerns.
What About the Skin Microbiome?
This is one of the areas I find particularly interesting.
The microorganisms living on our skin are influenced by their environment, including temperature, humidity, UV exposure, pollution, hygiene practices and the products we use. Researchers are investigating how climate-related environmental changes may alter the cutaneous microbiome and whether those changes could contribute to skin disease.
There is enough evidence to make this an important area of research, but not enough to turn it into a simple claim that climate change is “destroying” our skin microbiome—or that a cosmetic product can somehow climate-proof it.
Extreme Weather Changes the Exposure, Too
Climate change is not only about changes in average temperature. Heat waves, drought, wildfire smoke, flooding and shifts in humidity can change environmental exposures rapidly and sometimes dramatically.
For skin, that can mean combinations of heat, sweat, dry air, smoke, particulate pollution or long periods spent indoors with heating or air conditioning.
This is where I think climate-related skincare advice becomes much more practical. Instead of assuming that everyone needs a completely new routine, I would first ask what exposure has actually changed.
Sometimes the answer may justify changing how we care for our skin. Sometimes it may simply mean using what we already have differently.
Climate Change, Ozone and UV Are Not the Same Thing
Climate change, ozone depletion and UV radiation often appear in the same conversation, which makes it easy to treat them as parts of one simple chain: the planet gets warmer, the ozone layer gets thinner, and more UV reaches our skin.
It is more complicated than that.
The ozone layer sits in the stratosphere and absorbs much of the Sun’s UVB radiation before it reaches the Earth’s surface. When stratospheric ozone is depleted, more UVB can reach us. That connection is well established.
Climate change is a different environmental problem. It is driven primarily by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, while historical ozone depletion was largely caused by ozone-depleting substances such as CFCs. The two processes can interact through atmospheric chemistry and temperature, but one should not be used as shorthand for the other.
There is another complication: the amount of UV radiation that reaches our skin is not controlled by ozone alone. Latitude, season, time of day, altitude, cloud cover and reflection from surfaces such as water and snow all matter. Our own behaviour matters too—how much time we spend outside, when we are outside and how we protect ourselves.
So I would be careful with the simple claim that climate change means stronger UV radiation everywhere. Climate change can influence conditions that affect surface UV, including clouds and atmospheric processes, but the relationship varies by place and time.
For skincare, the practical conclusion is much simpler. UV exposure remains an important cause of skin damage regardless of whether a particular high-UV day can be attributed to climate change.
And that is also why I would not use climate change as an argument for choosing a mineral sunscreen over one with organic UV filters. That is a separate formulation and environmental question—and a much more complicated one than “mineral equals reef-safe.”
Does Your Skincare Routine Really Need to Change?
After reading about heat, pollution, UV exposure and changes in humidity, it would be easy to conclude that we all need a new “climate-adapted” skincare routine.
I am not convinced that we do.
Skin has always responded to seasonal and environmental changes. What may change is the frequency, intensity or combination of some of those exposures. A longer period of hot, humid weather may make a rich cream feel uncomfortable. Dry air or more time spent in air conditioning may make the same skin prefer a more protective moisturiser. Increased exposure to smoke or particulate pollution may make gentle cleansing more important at the end of the day.
None of this requires an entirely new category of skincare.
I would start with the routine I already have and change something only when there is a reason to do so. Texture is a good example. A lighter emulsion may feel better during hot, humid weather, while a richer cream can be useful when conditions are cold or dry. That is a formulation response to the environment, not evidence that one texture is universally better for a changing climate.
The same applies to cleansing. Removing sunscreen, makeup, excess sebum and material deposited on the skin makes sense, but cleansing more aggressively because of pollution does not necessarily improve the situation. The goal is effective cleansing without unnecessarily compromising the skin barrier.
Antioxidants are another common recommendation in “climate-proof” skincare. There is good reason to study them because oxidative stress is one of the mechanisms associated with UV radiation and air pollution. But the presence of an antioxidant ingredient does not automatically tell us how well a finished cosmetic will protect skin under real-world conditions. The ingredient, concentration, formulation, stability and evidence for the finished product all matter.
And sunscreen remains important because of UV exposure—not because climate change suddenly made our previous skincare obsolete.
For me, the more useful approach is to watch what has actually changed: the weather, humidity, pollution exposure, how much time I spend outdoors and how my skin responds.
Then I can adjust the routine I already have rather than building a new one around the latest environmental beauty claim.
Climate Change Can Affect What Goes Into Your Skincare
Most conversations about climate change and skincare stop at what happens to our skin. But there is another side that interests me just as much as someone who makes skincare at home: what happens to the ingredients we formulate with?
Many cosmetic ingredients begin as agricultural raw materials. Carrier oils, butters, essential oils, hydrosols, botanical extracts and waxes ultimately depend on plants growing under particular environmental conditions.
Temperature, rainfall, drought, soil conditions and other environmental factors can influence plant growth and yield. They can also affect secondary metabolism and the chemical composition of plant material. Importantly, there is no single response: the effect depends on the species, genotype, type and intensity of environmental stress and the compounds being produced.
Essential oils are a particularly good example. Their aroma and chemical profile are not determined by botanical name alone. Geographic origin, climate, soil, altitude, water availability, stage of plant development, harvest time and extraction can all influence the relative amounts of volatile compounds in the resulting oil. This is one reason essential oils from the same botanical species can smell different or show different chemical profiles depending on where and how the plant was grown.
Research into medicinal and aromatic plants also shows why climate change matters here. Drought, temperature and other climate-related stresses can alter plant growth, essential-oil yield and secondary-metabolite production. In some plants or under mild stress, certain compounds may increase; under different or more severe conditions, yield or particular compounds may decrease. Climate change therefore does not give us a simple warmer climate = less potent plant equation.
That matters when a plant becomes a cosmetic raw material.
An oil is not simply the name printed on the bottle. Its fatty-acid profile, minor components, oxidation stability, colour and odour can vary with cultivar, growing conditions, harvest, processing and storage. For a formulator, consistency of a raw material can matter just as much as its botanical origin.
For a large cosmetic manufacturer, changes in a raw material may become a sourcing, specification or reformulation issue. As a home formulator, I see a much smaller part of that chain. An ingredient may become more expensive, harder to find, come from a different supplier or simply be different from the previous batch.
This is also one reason I am cautious when an exotic botanical ingredient is presented as inherently sustainable simply because it is natural. Where and how it was grown, how much plant material is required, processing, transport and what happens to the remaining biomass all contribute to the bigger picture.
Upcycled ingredients add another possibility. Tomato seed oil, for example, can be produced from seeds recovered from tomato-processing streams. Using an existing side stream as a cosmetic raw material can make use of biomass that already exists—but “upcycled” alone still does not tell us the ingredient’s complete environmental impact.
This changes the climate-and-skincare question for me.
It is no longer only “What should I put on my skin when the weather changes?”
It is also “What happens to the materials we use to make skincare when their growing conditions change?”
For formulators, that may eventually be one of the more interesting consequences of a changing climate.
Skincare Has a Climate Footprint Too
There is an awkward second half to the climate-and-skincare conversation.
While the beauty industry is developing products to help us deal with heat, pollution and other environmental stressors, making those products also requires raw materials, energy, water, packaging and transport.
The climate footprint of a skincare product begins long before the finished jar reaches the bathroom. Agricultural ingredients require land and resources to grow. Other cosmetic ingredients require extraction, refining or chemical processing. Formulation and manufacturing use energy and water, packaging requires materials and production, and finished products move through increasingly complex supply chains before they reach us.
And the most visible part of a product is not necessarily the part with the greatest impact.
Packaging is easy to notice because we are left holding the empty bottle or jar. The environmental burden associated with producing its ingredients, manufacturing the formula or transporting materials between suppliers and manufacturers is much harder for a consumer to see.
Use matters too. Some cosmetic products are rinsed off with water, while others remain on the skin. Hot water used during showers and cleansing requires energy. Rinse-off ingredients enter the wastewater stream, where their environmental fate depends on their properties and on wastewater treatment.
This is why I am hesitant when a new product is presented as a response to climate change without considering the additional resources required to make, package and distribute it.
If hotter summers make me prefer a lighter moisturiser, that may be a sensible adjustment. But if “climate-adaptive skincare” means adding several new products to a routine that was already working, the environmental equation becomes much less convincing.
That leads to a question I think the beauty industry will have to answer more often:
Does climate-adaptive skincare help us adapt—or does it sometimes give us another reason to consume more skincare?
5 Practical Ways to Adjust Your Skincare to the Conditions
Adapting skincare to changing conditions does not have to mean building a new routine. I would start with what already works and adjust individual steps when heat, humidity, dryness or time spent outdoors actually changes what my skin needs.
1. Keep UV Protection Consistent
UV exposure remains one of the best-established environmental factors affecting skin, regardless of climate change.
Ready-Made Option: If you prefer a mineral sunscreen,Clinique Sun SPF 50 Mineral Sunscreen Fluid For Face is one option to consider.
Choosing between mineral and organic UV filters is more complicated than the familiar “mineral = reef-safe” message suggests. I look at those differences more closely in my mineral vs chemical sunscreen guide.
2. Adjust Moisturisation to the Conditions
Heat, humidity, cold, dry air and air conditioning can change both what your skin needs and how a moisturiser feels. Sometimes adapting simply means choosing a lighter or richer texture rather than adding another product.
Ready-Made Option:Elizabeth Arden Advanced Ceramide is a richer night cream built around ceramide-focused skincare, making it a more relevant option when your skin benefits from a richer moisturiser.
If you prefer to formulate your own skincare, plant oils give you another way to adjust emolliency and skin feel. My Botanical Oil Guide compares their different properties.
3. Cleanse Effectively, Not Aggressively
Hot weather can mean more sweat and sebum, while sunscreen, makeup and particulate pollution add to what accumulates on the skin during the day. The aim is to remove what needs to be removed without chasing the “squeaky clean” feeling.
Ready-Made Option:CeraVe Hydrating Cream-to-Foam Cleanser is one ready-made cleansing option.
4. Cooling & Soothing Botanicals
Sometimes what I want during hot weather is much simpler: something cool and refreshing on my skin.
Ready-Made Option: Mario Badescu Facial Spray with Aloe, Cucumber and Green Tea is one option if you enjoy facial mists.
A suitable facial mist can also be kept in the fridge for a cooling sensation on hot days. No “climate-proof” ingredients required.
5. Let Your Skin Decide How Much Exfoliation It Needs
There is no universal climate-change schedule for exfoliation. If your skin is already irritated or uncomfortable, it may be a good time to ease back rather than follow a fixed routine.
What I Actually Use: Peter Thomas Roth FIRMx Peeling Gel is one I genuinely enjoy. I gently massage it over my skin until the gel starts to roll into small particles. It feels surprisingly gentle and pleasant, and my skin does not feel dry afterwards.
The formula is interesting too: instead of the usual AHA or BHA acids, it contains cellulose and a keratinase enzyme. I would not assume that everything rolling off is dead skin, but I do like how the finished product performs on my skin.
DIY Gives You Another Way to Adapt
One advantage of making some of my own skincare is that I don’t necessarily need a new product every time my preferences change with the weather. I can adjust a simple formula instead.
In hotter weather, that might mean choosing a lighter emollient, making a lighter emulsion or reaching for a simple water-based mist. When conditions change again, the formula can change too.
- Hydrosols and simple water-based formulas: I use hydrosols because they bring both water and botanical character to a formula, not because I consider them automatically better than synthetic ingredients. My Hydration Mist recipe is one simple example.
- Choosing oils by their properties: Plant oils differ in fatty-acid composition, oxidation stability and skin feel. Jojoba is technically a liquid wax and can be useful when I want a different sensory profile from a conventional vegetable oil. I look at it more closely in Jojoba Oil in Skincare.
- Looking beyond the natural/synthetic divide: A botanical ingredient is not automatically the environmentally preferable choice, and a synthetic ingredient is not automatically the worse one. Persistence, biodegradability, sourcing, processing and what happens after use all matter. My article on Microplastics in Cosmetics looks more closely at one part of that environmental question.
For me, this is where DIY becomes genuinely useful in a changing environment: I can change the formulation when there is a reason to change it, rather than buying an entirely new routine.
Frequently Asked Questions about climate change and skin care
1. How does air pollution affect my skin?
Air pollution can expose skin to particulate matter, ozone and other pollutants associated with oxidative stress, inflammation and signs of premature skin ageing. Pollution and sunlight can also act together, an interaction sometimes described as photo-pollution. How much this matters to an individual depends on the type and level of exposure as well as the skin itself.
2. Why does my skin suddenly act up when the weather goes wild?
Temperature and humidity influence the environment at the skin surface. Heat can increase sweating and sebum production, while dry conditions can affect skin hydration and water loss. Sudden changes in weather can therefore change how your skin feels and behaves, particularly if you already have a sensitive or compromised skin barrier.
Rather than rebuilding your routine, start by looking at what changed—heat, humidity, dry air, air conditioning or pollution exposure—and adjust only what your skin seems to need.
3. Do I need different skincare because of climate change?
Probably not an entirely different routine. UV protection, appropriate cleansing and moisturising according to your skin’s needs remain useful regardless of climate change.
What may change is how a product feels or performs under different conditions. You might prefer a lighter moisturiser during hot, humid weather and something richer when the air is cold or dry. The useful question is whether your skin’s needs have actually changed—not whether you need to buy a new category of “climate-adaptive” products.
4. Does climate change mean we are exposed to more UV radiation?
Not that simply. Climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and UV radiation are related environmental issues, but they are not the same thing.
The amount of UV reaching the Earth’s surface depends on several factors, including stratospheric ozone, latitude, season, time of day, altitude, cloud cover and surface reflection. Climate change can influence some of these factors, but it does not follow that global warming automatically means stronger UV everywhere.
UV protection remains important because UV exposure itself is a well-established risk to skin—not because every high-UV day is a consequence of climate change.
Can climate change affect cosmetic ingredients?
Potentially, yes—especially ingredients derived from plants. Temperature, drought, rainfall and other growing conditions can affect plant growth, yield and, in some cases, chemical composition.
Essential oils are a good example. Their yield and volatile composition can vary with growing conditions, harvest and other factors. For cosmetic formulators, climate-related changes could therefore eventually affect ingredient availability, price, consistency or sourcing.
What I Would Actually Change
After looking more closely at climate change and skincare, I don’t think the answer is a completely new bathroom shelf.
I would still protect my skin from UV exposure and adjust my routine when heat, humidity or dry air gives me a reason to. But I am now much more interested in what happens before a product reaches my bathroom.
What happens to rosemary grown through repeated droughts? Will an essential oil from the same plant and region smell or behave the same as growing conditions change? What happens when a botanical oil becomes harder or more expensive to source? And when the characteristics of a raw material change, what does that mean for the person trying to formulate with it?
Those questions are much more interesting to me than finding the next “climate-proof” moisturiser.
Some climate-adaptive beauty ideas solve genuine formulation problems. Products still need to remain stable, pleasant to use and suitable for the conditions in which they are stored and used. But adapting to climate change should not automatically mean buying more skincare.
For me, the most useful change is simpler: pay attention to what has actually changed, understand what that means for the skin or the formula, and change something only when there is a good reason to do so.
If you want a structured approach to formulating your own clean products, my DIY Skincare Recipes: From Random Mixing to Real Formulation pillar page and the DIY Skincare Recipes Library will show you how to build real botanical resilience from scratch.
Further Reading & Resources:
Where I dug up the data (PubMed Sources):
If you want to skip the beauty marketing and see what environmental scientists and skin researchers are actually tracking, here are the original studies:
- On weather shifts and skin surface balance: Isler, M. F., Coates, S. J., & Boos, M. D. (2022). Climate change, the cutaneous microbiome and skin disease. International Journal of Dermatology. PubMed PMID: 35599301
- On the synergy of smog and sunlight (Photo-pollution): Parrado, C., et al. (2019). Environmental Stressors on Skin Aging. Mechanistic Insights. PubMed PMCID: PMC6629960
- On extreme weather and skin stress: Belzer, A., & Parker, E. R. (2023). Climate Change, Skin Health, and Dermatologic Disease. PubMed PMID: 37336870
- On cumulative sun exposure and pollutant burdens: Zieneldien, T., et al. (2025). The Environmental Determinants of Skin Health: Linking Climate Change, Air Pollution, and Dermatologic Burden. PubMed PMCID: PMC12732634
- Isler, M. F., Coates, S. J., & Boos, M. D. (2022). Climate change, the cutaneous microbiome and skin disease. International Journal of Dermatology, 61(8), 1018–1024. PubMed PMID 35599301
- Parrado, C., Mercado-Saenz, S., Perez-Davo, A., Gilaberte, Y., Gonzalez, S., & Juarranz, A. (2019). Environmental Stressors on Skin Aging. Mechanistic Insights. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 10, 759. Full text – PMC
- Belzer, A., & Parker, E. R. (2023). Climate Change, Skin Health, and Dermatologic Disease. PubMed PMID 37336870
- Zieneldien, T., et al. (2025). The Environmental Determinants of Skin Health: Linking Climate Change, Air Pollution, and Dermatologic Burden. Full text – PMC
- Review on environmental factors affecting essential-oil composition (2023). Molecules, 28(2), 901. Molecules – full text
- 2024 review on climate-change-related abiotic factors and Lamiaceae. PubMed PMID 39049861
- 2024 experimental study on climate-induced changes in essential-oil production and terpene composition in alpine aromatic plants. ScienceDirect – study
