More than 47,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes during 2023, the world’s hottest year on record, a new report in Nature Medicine has found.
But the number could have been much higher.
Without heat adaptation measures over the past two decades, the death toll for Europeans experiencing the same temperatures at the start of the 21st century could have been 80% higher, according to the new study. For people older than 80, the toll could have doubled.
Some of the measures include advances in health care, more widespread air conditioning, and improved public information that kept people indoors and hydrated amid extreme temperatures.
“We need to consider climate change as a health issue,” said Elisa Gallo, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a nonprofit research center.
Counting deaths from extreme heat is difficult, in part because death certificates don’t always reflect the role of heat.
The study used publicly available death records from 35 countries, provided by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union, and representing about 543 million Europeans.
The researchers used an epidemiological model to analyze the deaths alongside 2023 weekly temperature records to estimate what fraction of deaths could be attributable to heat.
“We’re quickly approaching the limits to what the human body can withstand,” said Jordan Clark, a senior policy associate at Duke University’s Heat Policy Innovation Hub who was not involved in the study.
Heat waves are becoming more severe and prolonged as global temperatures increase. Ending our reliance on fossil fuels would be a core mitigation strategy, Clark said.
The past two decades have pushed people to modify their behaviors in response to heat, Gallo said.
Other policy-level changes like improving urban planning, increasing green spaces, investing more in renewable energy and public transportation, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions could all contribute to adaptation.
Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University, said the study’s timing was crucial as it came on the heels of a global call to act on extreme heat issued last month by the secretary-general of the United Nations.
“Europe is really ahead of the U.S. on many of these kinds of activities, like heat governance and early warning systems,” Ward said.
“The problem is growing faster than the data improvement is happening.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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