More than 61,000 people died as a result of the heat during Europe’s record-breaking summer last year, according to a report released on Monday, which called for more to be done to prepare for even deadlier heatwaves in the coming years. In 2022, the world’s fastest-warming continent suffered the warmest summer on record, with countries plagued by blazing heatwaves, crop-killing droughts, and deadly wildfires. Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics department, had previously recorded an exceptionally high number of excess deaths over the summer, but the amount directly related to the heat had not been measured.
A group of researchers examined temperature and mortality data from 2015 to 2022 for 823 areas across 35 European countries, totaling 543 million people. According to the survey, the majority of deaths occurred among adults above the age of 80. According to the data, around 63 percent of those who died as a result of the heat were women. The disparity grew more pronounced at the age of 80, when women had a 27 percent higher mortality rate than men.
Previous research has indicated that Europe is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. While the world has warmed by an average of almost 1.2 degrees Celsius since the mid-1800s, Europe was around 2.3 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times last year. According to the latest report, unless something is done to protect people from rising temperatures, Europe would face an average of more than 68,000 heat-related deaths each summer by 2030.
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