More than 61,000 people died from heat in Europe in 2022 – 07/10/2023 – World

Research published in the journal Nature Medicine on Monday (10) estimates that more than 61,000 people died of heat in Europe in the summer of 2022 – the hottest ever recorded in the continent’s history. The number is close to that recorded in one of the worst heat waves in the region, when the high temperatures of 2003 claimed the lives of 70,000 people.

The study was authored by researchers from Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and Isglobal (Barcelona Global Health Institute), who analyzed temperature and mortality data from 2015 to 2022 in 823 regions in 35 countries. Europeans.

The analysis revealed that between May 30 and September 4 last year, there were 61,672 heat-attributable deaths in Europe. A particularly intense heat wave between July 18 and 24 alone left 11,637 deaths.

“It’s a very high number of deaths”, says Hicham Achebak, a researcher at Inserm and one of the authors of the study. “We already knew about the effects of heat on mortality from the 2003 precedent, but with this analysis it is clear that there is still a lot of work to be done to protect the population,” he added.

In addition to these calculations, the scientists even built epidemiological models that allow predicting mortality attributable to temperatures in each region and week of the season. According to them, the continent could face more than 94,000 deaths from heat waves in 2040.

In addition to the deaths, heat waves on the continent in 2022 still caused multiple droughts and forest fires. Scientists attribute extreme weather phenomena like them to the climate crisis, caused by human action.