BURSTClimate change caused by humans played a direct role in the deaths of about 1,504 people during a heat wave that struck Europe last week, a new report has found.
Warming linked to the combustion of fossil fuels nearly tripled the number of heat-related fatalities that occurred during the June 23 to July 2 period, according to the report, published by the Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute.
Human-induced warming, which increased heatwave temperatures by up to 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit), was responsible for about 65 percent of the total 2,305 heat-related deaths, the data showed.
The researchers, who also worked with scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, tabulated 317 excess heat deaths in Milan, 286 in Barcelona, 235 in Paris, 1,712 in London, 164 in Rome, 108 in Madrid, 96 in Athens, 47 in Budapest, 31 in Zagreb, 21 in Frankfurt, 21 in Lisbon and six in Sassari, Italy.
The climate-driven death toll in many European cities surpassed that of other recent disasters, including the 2024 floods of Valencia and the 2021 floods of northwest Europe, in which 224 and 243 deaths occurred, respectively, per the report.
With individuals aged 65 and older making up 88 percent of the fatalities, the researchers stressed that people with underlying health conditions may be most vulnerable to premature death during heatwaves.
To draw their conclusions, the researchers first used peer-reviewed methods to derive age-group specific estimates of links between temperature and mortality in the 12 cities of interest.
They then applied established epidemiological tools to compare the heat intensities for each city, under both the observed conditions and hypothetical scenarios without the influences of warming.
“Without human induced climate change early heatwaves of the temperatures observed would have been much rarer,” the authors stated.
The heatwaves would have been 2-4 degrees Celsius (3.6-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler in all the cities aside from Lisbon, per the research.
“The findings of this analysis and many others are extremely clear: heat extremes all across Europe are increasing rapidly due to human-induced climate change,” the authors stated.
Although the researchers acknowledged that heat action plans and early-warning systems are increasingly being implemented across the region, they identified “an urgent need for an accelerated roll-out of further adaptation measures.”
Such action is critical, they concluded, due to the “increasing vulnerability driven by the intersecting trends of climate change, aging population and urbanization.”