More Than 61,000 People Died In Europe Due To Hot Temperatures In The Hotst Summer In History

In 2022 more than 61.000 people died across Europe due to heat waves. (photo: dock. pexels)

JAKARTA - More than 61,000 people have died across Europe - including nearly 3,500 in the UK - due to the summer air called the hottest ever on the continent last year. This was revealed in a surprising new statistical report.

Temperatures that recorded record causes heat waves, droughts and forest fires across the continent last summer.

Now, the scary statistics reveal the high number of deaths from this incredible heat.

Italy, Spain and Germany have the highest number of deaths from heat, while women have also proven more than twice as likely to die from heat than men.

According to the study, Europe - the continent experiencing the largest warming - could occur around 68,000 premature deaths from summers by the end of the decade unless a more effective response is implemented. The researchers also warned that by 2040, it is estimated that heat will cause nearly 100,000 deaths across the continent every summer.

Research from the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal) with the French National Institute of Health (Inserm) studied temperature and death data between 2015 and 2022 for 823 regions in 35 European countries with a population of more than 543 million people.

This data is used to estimate epidemiological models and predict deaths that can be attributed to temperatures for each region and week of the summer period.

Summer 2022, however, is an unprecedented summer-packed season.

The highest recorded temperature was 47°C in Pinh Orang, Portugal, on July 14 - while the UK was experiencing temperatures exceeding 40 degC for the first time, with Coningsby, Lincolnshire reaching 40.3 degC.

The analysis published in the journal Nature Medicine estimates that there were 61,672 deaths that could be attributed to the heat between May 30 and September 4 last year.

The hottest period alone - between July 11 and August 14 - is estimated to have caused 38,881 deaths from heat.

During that period, heat waves across Europe between July 18 and 24 were estimated to have caused 11,637 deaths.

The country with the highest number of deaths from summer last year was Italy, with 18,010 deaths, followed by Spain and Germany, each reporting 11,324 and 8,173 deaths. Britain is estimated to have 3,469 deaths from last summer's summer.

Seeing the temperature anomaly, France experienced an increase in temperature of +2.43$C above the average value for the 1991-2020 period, followed by Switzerland (+2.30$C), Italy (+2.28$C), Hungary (+2.13$C), and Spain (+2.11$C).

The study also includes distinguished statistics based on age and gender, which show a significant increase in mortality in the elderly - but also in women.

There are an estimated 4,822 deaths among Europeans under the age of 65, 9,226 deaths between those aged between 65 and 79, and 36,848 deaths among those over the age of 79.

Data as a whole across the continent also shows a hot death toll that is 63 percent higher in women than men - with several countries (Italy, Greece) recording twice the number of deaths from heat in women than men.

The data shows a total of 35,406 premature deaths in women compared to the estimated 21,667 deaths in men.

Higher susceptibility to heat in women is observed in the population as a whole and especially in those over the age of 80, where the death rate is 27 percent higher than that of men.

Europe is the continent experiencing the largest warming, with temperatures rising to 1 degC higher than the global average.

Estimates by the research team show that if there is no effective and adaptive response, the continent will face an average of more than 68,000 premature deaths each summer by 2030 and more than 94,000 by 2040.

Despite the high number of deaths from the continent's heat in the summer last year, the highest death toll in the summer was recorded in 2003, when it was reported that more than 70,000 deaths were excessive.

However, Joan Ballester Claramunt, lead author of studies and researchers at ISGlobal, highlighted the fact that the summer of 2003 was an 'extraordinary phenomenon' - while last year's summer summer summer was not so.

"The 2003 summer is a very rare phenomenon, even when accounting for human-induced warming observed to date," he said.

"This extraordinary incident underscores the lack of plans to prevent and fragility of the health system in dealing with climate-related emergencies, something that was handled in several ways last year," Claramunt said.