Nearly 62,000 people died from record-breaking heat in Europe last summer
“It’s a very big number”: Italy and Spain were the hardest-hit countries, according to a study published Monday.
(CNN) — Nearly 62,000 people died heat-related deaths last year during Europe’s hottest summer on record, a new study has found — more heartbreaking evidence that heat is a silent killer, and its victims are vastly under-counted.
The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, found that 61,672 died in Europe from heat-related illness between May 30 and Sept. 4 last year. Italy was the hardest-hit country, with around 18,000 deaths, followed by Spain with just over 11,000 and Germany with around 8,000.
Researchers also found the extreme heat disproportionately harmed the elderly and women. Of the nearly 62,000 deaths analyzed, heat-related mortality rate was 63% higher in women than in men. Age was also an important factor, with the death toll increasing significantly for people aged 65 and over.
“It’s a very big number,” Joan Ballester, an epidemiologist at ISGlobal and the lead author of the study, told CNN.
Eurostat, which is Europe’s statistical office, attempted to quantify the heat wave’s death toll last year by tallying excess deaths — or how many people died more than a typical summer. But Ballester, who lives in Spain and sweated through last year’s heat wave, said the study published Monday was the first to analyze how many deaths last summer were specifically caused by heat.
Researchers analyzed temperature and mortality data between 2015 and 2022 for 35 European countries — representing a total population of 543 million people — and used it to create epidemiological models to calculate heat-related deaths.
“For me, I’m an epidemiologist, so I know what to expect and (the number of deaths) is not surprising, but for the general population, it’s very likely that this is astonishing,” he said.
The region has seen this script before — an unprecedented heat wave resulted in more than 70,000 excess deaths in the summer of 2003. That heat wave was an “exceptionally rare event,” the study’s scientists said, even when accounting for the human-caused climate crisis.
The 2003 heat wave was a wake-up call, researchers said. It showed Europe at the time lacked the kind of preparedness to prevent a mass casualty event from heat, and it exposed the fragile nature of the region’s health system, Ballester said, particularly as weather extremes become more frequent and intense.
But the study’s findings show that even Europe’s current prevention plans are still not enough to keep up with the breakneck pace at which dangerous heat waves are occurring and putting even more lives at risk.
“The fact that more than 61,600 people in Europe died of heat stress in the summer of 2022, even though, unlike in 2003, many countries already had active prevention plans in place, suggests that adaptation strategies currently available may still be insufficient,” said Hicham Achebak, a co-author of the study and researcher at ISGlobal.
While the numbers may have been worse without the region’s current heat prevention plans, the authors warn that the world is only going to get hotter — and that without effective adaptation plans in place, Europe could face more than 68,000 premature deaths each summer by 2030, and over 94,000 by 2040.
“The acceleration of warming observed over the last 10 years underlines the urgent need to reassess and substantially strengthen prevention plans,” Achebak said.
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