Almost 62 000 people in Europe died from the heat last summer, when temperatures broke records. The study, published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine, showed that people in Italy, Spain and Germany were the most affected.
Scientists found that the heat hit women and the elderly the hardest. Of the 62 000 dead, 63% were women.
The researchers analyzed temperature and mortality data from 2015 to 2022 for 35 European countries with a total population of 543 million people and used them to create epidemiological models to calculate heat-related deaths.
High mortality due to heat was also in 2003, when 70 thousand people died due to it. At that time, according to scientists, Europe lacked the readiness to prevent mass mortality and health protection mechanisms in the face of climate change. However, the current readiness is also insufficient, the researchers added.
- The World Meteorological Organization reported on July 10 that the beginning of July 2023 was the hottest week in the entire history of observations on the planet.
- Earlier, the European Unionʼs Copernicus Climate Monitoring Service reported that the last eight years were the warmest on record. Average temperatures make 2022 the fifth warmest year since records began in the 19th century. According to Copernicus, the hottest years were 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2020.