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The summer of 2022 was the hottest summer ever recorded in Europe and was marked by an intense series of record-breaking heat waves, droughts and wildfires. While Eurostat, the European statistical office, already reported unusually high excess mortality before that date, the fraction of heat-related mortality had not been quantified until now.
This is exactly what was done in a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) in collaboration with the French National Institute of Health (Inserm). The analysis, published in Naturopathyestimates 61,672 deaths from heat between May 30 and September 4, 2022.
The research team collected temperature and mortality data for the period 2015-2022 for 823 regions in 35 European countries, whose total population represents 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 was a season of unrelenting heat. Records show that temperatures were higher than average during each week of the summer period. The highest temperature anomalies were recorded during the hottest month, from mid-July to mid-August. This coincidence, according to the researchers, increased heat-related mortality, resulting in 38,881 deaths between July 11 and August 14. Within that span of just over a month, there was an intense pan-European heat wave between July 18 and July 24, with a total of 11,637 deaths attributed to it.
Most affected countries
In absolute terms, Italy was the country with the highest number of heat-related deaths during the entire summer of 2022, with a total of 18,010 deaths, followed by Spain (11,324) and Germany (8,173).
When the data is ordered by heat-related death rate, the top country is Italy, with 295 deaths per million, followed by Greece (280), Spain (237) and Portugal (211). The European average was estimated at 114 deaths per million.
On the other hand, looking only at temperature anomalies, the country with the warmest value was France, with +2.43°C above the average values for the period 1991–2020, followed by Switzerland (+2.30°C) , Italy (+2.28°C), Hungary (+2.13°C) and Spain (+2.11°C).
Data from the 35 countries
This graphic shows the details of the mortality estimates for the 35 countries analysed.
The study included an analysis by age and sex, which showed a very marked increase in mortality in the older age groups, especially in women. For example, there are an estimated 4,822 deaths among those under 65, 9,226 deaths among those between 65 and 79, and 36,848 deaths among those over 79.
In terms of gender analysis, the data shows that heat-related mortality was 63% higher in women than in men, with a total of 35,406 premature deaths (145 deaths per million), compared to an estimated 21,667 deaths in men (93 deaths per million ). This greater vulnerability of women to heat is observed in the population as a whole and especially in people over the age of 80, where the mortality rate is 27% higher than that of men. In contrast, the male mortality rate is 41% higher in those under the age of 65 and 13% higher in those between the ages of 65 and 79.
Lessons from the 2003 heat wave
To date, the highest summer mortality in Europe was recorded in 2003, when more than 70,000 excess deaths were recorded.
“The summer of 2003 was an exceptionally rare phenomenon, even when taking into account the anthropogenic warming observed up to that point. This exceptional nature highlighted the lack of prevention plans and the vulnerability of health systems to deal with climate-related emergencies, something addressed this to some extent in subsequent years,” explains Joan Ballester Claramunt, first author of the study and researcher at ISGlobal, who has a grant from the European Research Council.
“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,” he adds. Ballester.
“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, suggests that currently available adaptation strategies may still be insufficient.” says Hicham Achebak, researcher at Inserm and ISGlobal and final author of the study.
“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 differ in vulnerability to heat,” he adds.
Europe is the continent experiencing the greatest warming, up to 1°C 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.
More information:
Joan Ballester, Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022, Naturopathy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z. www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z
Quote: Record-breaking summer heat in 2022 caused more than 61,000 deaths in Europe, study finds (2023, July 10) Retrieved July 11, 2023 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-record-breaking-summer-deaths -europe.html
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