More than 50,000 people in Europe died from record heat this year
CNN cited two studies in the journal Nature Health published on October 14, estimating that more than 50,000 people died in European cities during heat waves that scorched the continent throughout the summer, becoming the deadliest heat wave in the region's history. About two-thirds of the deaths (more than 32,600 people) are directly related to climate change caused by pollution from fossil fuels.
The death toll was announced just weeks before world leaders met in Türkiye for the annual United Nations climate conference, and just days after warning that the chances of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels had all but disappeared.
"We are on track to limit the worst consequences of climate change and governments need to be aware that if they do not coordinate action more quickly, the situation will only get worse," emphasized Clair Barnes, a researcher on extreme weather and climate change at Imperial College London.
Europe is the fastest-warming continent with extreme temperatures already reaching intolerable levels. The entire region faced unprecedented heat from late May to August. This was the hottest summer on record in Western Europe, with temperatures about 2.9 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average. However, on individual days, some countries recorded temperatures 12 degrees Celsius higher than normal.
According to the New York Times, Barnes and his colleagues focused on 854 urban areas in 30 countries: 27 European Union member states, along with England, Norway and Switzerland. These towns and cities account for about 40% of the total population of these countries, but are not representative of all of Europe.
The team selected the list based on its ability to collect the data needed to estimate heat-related deaths in each summer since 2000. They compared temperatures in those places this summer with temperatures expected in a situation without climate change. They then used peer-reviewed research on the relationship between high temperatures and daily deaths to model the rate of heat-related deaths from early June to late August. According to Barnes, the above method produced death estimates that were roughly consistent with the numbers that national health agencies subsequently released.
The team estimated a total of 50,391 heat-related deaths in the city. The number of deaths is the highest in the past 26 years and significantly higher than previous major heat waves in Europe in 2022 and 2003. Of which, in the summer of 2022, about 29,480 people died and in the summer of 2003, 28,462 people died.
Southern and Western Europe were the hardest hit, but cooler regions in the north, including Britain, also recorded thousands of deaths. The highest death rate was in people aged 85 and older, and more than 800 people between the ages of 20 and 44 died from heat-related causes.
Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, explains that the main reason for this year's jump in mortality estimates is simply the intensity of the heat that affected large areas of Europe over a long period of time.
"Much of the infrastructure in Western and Northern Europe is not designed to cope with the kind of temperatures we are seeing now under the impact of global warming caused by human activity," AP quoted Barnes as saying.
Scientists also found that the role of climate change in deaths caused by high temperatures is becoming clearer. At the beginning of this century, pollution from fossil fuels caused about 40% of heat-related deaths compared with two-thirds today.
European governments are paying more attention to the risks of high temperatures. One sign is that health authorities in some countries, such as the UK, France, Germany and Spain, are starting to provide estimates of heat-related deaths while the summer is still going on.