Last year was the hottest on record. As climate change continues to push temperatures higher, Europeans living on the world’s fastest-warming continent face increasing health risks from intense heat.
The death toll in 2023 – down from more than 60,000 heat-related deaths estimated for the previous year – would have been 80% higher without measures introduced over the past 20 years to help people adapt to rising temperatures, such as early warning systems and improvements in healthcare, according to the report by the Spanish research centre.
“Our results show that there have been processes of social adaptation to high temperatures during the present century, which have drastically reduced vulnerability and the burden of heat-related mortality in recent summers, especially among older people,” says Elisa Gallo, researcher at ISGlobal and first author of the study.
The researchers used death and temperature records from 35 European countries and calculated that 47,690 people died from heat-related causes.
Adjusting the data for population, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain were the countries with the highest heat-related mortality rates.
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