Global warming to blame for more than half of Europe's heat-related deaths

A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), funded by the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, revealed that high temperatures in the summer of 2022 caused more than 68,000 deaths on the continent. 

A recent study has shown that 56% of heat-related deaths during the summer of 2022 were caused by human-induced climate change. 

The starting point was previous research in which, using temperature and mortality records from 35 European countries, epidemiological models were fitted to estimate heat-related mortality in the summer of 2022. 

Using a dataset of global mean surface temperature anomalies between 1880 and 2022, they estimated the increase in temperatures due to anthropogenic warming in each region. They then subtracted these increases from the recorded temperatures to obtain an estimate of what the thermometric records would have been in the absence of anthropogenic warming. Finally, using the model developed in the first study, they estimated mortality for a hypothetical scenario in which these temperatures would have occurred without warming. 

The results, published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, showed that the number of heat-related deaths per million inhabitants attributed to anthropogenic warming was twice as high in southern regions as in the rest of Europe. 

In line with previous studies, the team found a higher number of heat-related deaths attributed to climate change among women (22,501 out of 37,983 deaths) and people aged 80 years or older (23,881 out of 38,978 deaths) compared to men (14,026 out of 25,385 deaths) and people aged 64 years or younger (2,702 out of 5,565 deaths). 

‘This study sheds light on the extent to which global warming affects public health. Although we observed an increase in heat-related mortality in almost all the countries analysed, not all people are affected equally, with women and the elderly being particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of rising temperatures,’ says Thessa Beck, ISGlobal researcher and first author of the study. 

Ambitious adaptation and mitigation measures urgently needed 

Temperatures in Europe are rising twice as fast as the global average, exacerbating health effects. But climate change has not only exacerbated heat-related mortality in exceptionally hot summers such as 2022. According to the study's findings, between 44% and 54% of heat-related summer mortality between 2015 and 2021 can be attributed to global warming. In absolute terms, this corresponds to an annual burden of between 19,000 and 28,000 deaths. In comparison, the figures for 2022 show an alarming 40% increase in heat-related mortality and a two-thirds increase in mortality attributed to anthropogenic warming. 

‘Our study urgently calls on governments and national authorities on the European continent to increase the ambition and effectiveness of monitoring and prevention measures and to implement new adaptation strategies and global mitigation efforts. Without action, record temperatures and heat-related mortality will continue to rise in the coming years,’ says Joan Ballester Claramunt, principal investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) EARLY-ADAPT project.