Human-made global heating caused two in every three heat deaths in Europe during this year’s scorching summer, an early analysis of mortality in 854 big cities has found.
Epidemiologists and climate scientists attributed 16,500 out of 24,400 heat deaths from June to August to the extra hot weather brought on by greenhouse gases.
The rapid analysis, which relies on established methods but has not yet been submitted for peer review, found climate breakdown made the cities 2.2C hotter on average, greatly increasing the death toll from dangerously warm weather.
“The causal chain from fossil fuel burning to rising heat and increased mortality is undeniable,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and a co-author of the report. “If we had not continued to burn fossil fuels over the last decades, most of the estimated 24,400 people in Europe wouldn’t have died this summer.”
The scientists used local relationships between temperature and death to model excess mortality during the hottest months of the year, and compared their results – which cover cities where almost one-third of the European population lives – with a hypothetical world without any climate change.
They found the extra heat was responsible for about 68% of the estimated deaths. Older people were hit hardest by punishing temperatures, the study found, with 85% of the dead over the age of 65, and 41% over the age of 85.
“The vast majority of heat deaths happen in homes and hospitals, where people with existing health conditions are pushed to their limits,” said Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London and co-author of the study. “But heat is rarely mentioned on death certificates.”
A handful of victims who died outside were named by local newspapers. Manuel Ariza Serrano, a 77-year-old former councillor in La Rambla, Spain, died after collapsing during a walk in August, according to the town council and former colleagues in the Córdoba region, which had highs of 45C that weekend.
Brahim Ait El Hajjam, a 47-year-old father of four who ran a flooring company in northern Italy, died while laying the concrete of a school building near Bologna, where temperatures reached 38C that day. He died two days before a regional order to stop outdoor construction work in the early afternoon was set to take effect.
“He called my mother to tell her that he’d come home to prepare lunch,” his 19-year-old son, Salah, told the Italian TV station Antena 3 after his death. “That he’d be home by noon.”
Konstantinoudis said the public health risk from heat was still being underestimated, despite the dangers.
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“No one would expect someone to risk their life working in torrential rain or hurricane winds,” he said. “But dangerous heat is still treated too casually.”
Europe’s cities are better prepared to deal with extreme heat than in 2003, when a devastating heatwave killed 70,000 people, but emergency services are struggling to keep pace with rising temperatures and an ageing population.
Doctors have called for local action plans when heatwaves hit, more green space in cities – which are hotter than their rural surroundings – and air-conditioning for vulnerable groups, such as residents of retirement homes.
Madeleine Thomson, an adaptation expert at Wellcome, a non-profit health group, who was not involved in the study, said the new data showed that “no city in Europe is immune” to deaths from extreme heat.
“If we don’t act now, the toll will rise,” she said. “We must urgently phase out fossil fuels and implement policies that protect those most at risk from increasingly deadly heatwaves.”
