More than 62,700 deaths from heat in summer in 2024 in Europe

A study led by the Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal) of the La Caixa Foundation has estimated in 62,775 heat-related deaths in Europe between June 1 and September 30, 2024when several temperature records were broken.

The mortality figures are a 23.6% higher than those of the summer of 2023 (50,800 estimated deaths) and a 8.1% lower than those of the summer of 2022 (67,900 estimated), ISGlobal reports in a statement this Monday.

19,000 deaths in Italy

The work, published in the magazine Nature Medicinefocused on 654 regions from 32 countriesof which the one who registers a highest number of deaths associated with the heat was Italy, with just over 19,000.

In the preceding summers of 2023 and 2022, Italy was also the country with the highest heat-related mortality, with almost 13,800 and 18,800 estimated deaths, respectively.

6,700 deaths in Spain

He second place In terms of estimated mortality in the summer of 2024, Spain occupies it, with more than 6,700 deaths, followed by Germany (about 6,300), Greece (about 6,000) and Romania (more than 4,900).

In the case of Spain, the estimated deaths in 2024 were approximately half those in 2022, due to the fact that Temperatures were lower than in the previous two summers.

Greece and Bulgaria, higher rate

Countries with the highest rate of heat-related deaths were Greece (574 estimated deaths per million people), Bulgaria (530 deaths per million) and Serbia (379 deaths per million), “significantly higher” rates for the two previous summers of the study, where the highest was Greece’s 373 deaths per million in 2023.

On the whole, 15 of the 32 countries evaluated recorded their highest burden and mortality rates related to heat during summer 2024.

Sex and age

The number of heat-related deaths was higher in women and in older people throughout the three summers studied.

It is estimated that in the summer of 2024 the number of heat-related deaths in women was a 46.7% higher than in menand in over 75 years old It was 323% higher than in the rest of the age groups as a whole.

The Mediterranean, hot spot

The researcher at ISGlobal and first author of the study, Tomás Janos, explained that Europe is warming faster at twice the speed of the global averageand within it, the Mediterranean basin and the southeastern regions emerge as ‘big hot spots’ of climate change.

They present “the greatest impacts on health” and a substantial increase in heat-related mortality projections throughout the 21st century.

The senior author of the study and principal investigator of the Early-Adapt project of the European Research Council (ERC), Joan Ballester, has stated that the magnitude of these figures highlights the need to “strengthen adaptation strategies“.