Europe heatwave: 61,000 people died across the continent in summer 2022 – including 3,469 in the UK

More than 61,000 people died across Europe – including nearly 3,500 in the UK – due to heat during the hottest summer on record on the continent last year, shocking new statistics reveal.

Record-breaking temperatures led to heat waves, droughts and wildfires across the continent last summer.

Now terrifying statistics reveal the deadly toll of this record-breaking heat.

Italy, Spain and Germany had the highest number of heat-related deaths, while women were also shown to be more than twice as likely to die from heat than men.

Europe — the continent experiencing the greatest warming — should expect about 68,000 premature heat-induced deaths each summer by the end of the decade unless more effective measures are taken, the study suggests.

The researchers also warned that by 2040, heat is expected to be responsible for nearly 100,000 deaths across the continent each summer.

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

These data were used to estimate epidemiological models and predict temperature-related mortality for each region and week of the summer period.

The summer of 2022, however, was a season of unprecedented, unrelenting heat.

The highest recorded temperature was 47°C (116.6°F) in Pinhão, Portugal, on July 14 – while the UK saw temperatures above 40°C (104°F) for the first time, with Coningsby, Lincolnshire recording 40. reached 3 °C ( 104.5°F).

The analysis, published in the journal Nature Medicine, estimates 61,672 deaths from heat between May 30 and September 4 last year.

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

Within that period, a pan-European heat wave between July 18 and July 24 alone would have caused 11,637 deaths.

The country with the highest number of heat deaths last summer was Italy, with 18,010 deaths, followed by Spain and Germany, with 11,324 and 8,173 deaths respectively.

The UK suffered an estimated 3,469 heat-related deaths last summer.

Looking at temperature anomalies, France saw +2.43°C (+4.37°F) above average values ​​for the period 1991-2020, followed by Switzerland (+2.30°C/4.14°F), Italy (+2.28°C/4.1°F), Hungary (+2.13°C/3.9°F) and Spain (+2.11°C/3.79°F).

The study also included statistics differentiated by age and sex, which showed a marked increase in mortality in older age groups – but also in women.

It was estimated that there were 4,822 deaths among Europeans under 65, 9,226 deaths among those between 65 and 79, and 36,848 deaths among those over 79.

The continent-wide data also showed that heat deaths are 63 percent higher in women than in men – with some countries (Italy, Greece) recording double the number of heat deaths in women than in men.

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

This greater vulnerability of women to heat is seen in the population as a whole and especially in people over the age of 80, where the mortality rate is 27 percent higher than that of men.

Europe is the continent experiencing the greatest warming, up to 1°C (1.8°F) more than the global average.

Estimates from the research team suggest that, in the absence of an effective, adaptive response, the continent will average more than 68,000 premature deaths each summer by 2030 and more than 94,000 by 2040.

Despite the shockingly high number of heat-related deaths on the continent last summer, the highest summer deaths were recorded in 2003, when more than 70,000 excess deaths were reported.

But Joan Ballester Claramunt, the study’s first author and a researcher at ISGlobal, stressed the fact that the heat of the summer of 2003 was “exceptional” — while last summer’s was not.

“The summer of 2003 was an exceptionally rare phenomenon, even taking into account the anthropogenic warming observed up to that point,” he said.

This exceptional nature highlighted the lack of prevention plans and the vulnerability of health systems to deal with climate-related emergencies, something that was addressed to some extent in subsequent years.

“However, the measured temperatures in the summer of 2022 cannot be considered exceptional in the sense that they could have been predicted by following the temperature series of previous years, and they show that warming has accelerated over the past decade.”

Dr. Hicham Achebak, a researcher at Inserm and ISGlobal and another author of the study, added that the statistics show that heat adaptation strategies currently used by European countries require significant reassessment and improvement.

He explained: ‘The fact that more than 61,600 people in Europe died of heat stress in the summer of 2022 – even though, unlike in 2003, many countries already had active prevention plans in place – suggests that currently available adaptation strategies may still be insufficient.

“The acceleration of warming observed over the last decade underscores the urgent need to reassess and substantially strengthen prevention plans, with a particular focus on the differences between European countries and regions, as well as the age and gender gaps, which are currently the differences in vulnerability to heat.’