Study: Europe recorded 47,000 heat-related deaths in 2023

More than 47,000 people died from searing temperatures in Europe in 2023, according to a new study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. 

The study titled: ‘Heat-related mortality in Europe during 2023 and the role of adaptation in protecting health’, was published on Monday in the Nature Medicine journal.

The research team used mortality data from the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) to estimate the heat-related mortality burden for 823 regions in 35 countries.

According to these estimates, there were 47,690 heat-related deaths in Europe last year.

This, the study said, is the second highest mortality rate since such calculations began in 2015, with the highest rate recorded in 2022.

The researchers also found that the countries with the highest heat-related mortality rates are in southern Europe.

They found that heat-related mortality in 2023 was highest in Greece, with 393 deaths per million people, followed by Italy with 209 deaths per million and Spain with 175 deaths per million.

The research group also modelled the effects of heat-related mortality without adaptation measures such as improved healthcare, lifestyle, risk awareness, and effective communication.

According to the study, mortality rate in 2023 would have been 80 percent higher if people had not adapted to rising temperatures over the past two decades.

The study revealed that the mortality rate was 55 percent higher in women than in men, with older people particularly susceptible.

Elisa Gallo, an environmental epidemiologist and lead author of the study, said the results showed that efforts taken to adapt societies to heatwaves have been effective.

“Our results show how there have been societal adaptation processes to high temperatures during the present century, which have dramatically reduced the heat-related vulnerability and mortality burden of recent summers, especially among the elderly,” Gallo said.

“This indicates that we are less vulnerable to heat than we were at the beginning of the century, probably as a result of general socio-economic progress, improvements in individual behaviour and public health measures such as the heat prevention plans implemented after the record-breaking summer of 2003.

“But the number of heat-related deaths is still too high. Europe is warming at twice the rate of the global average. We can’t rest on our laurels.”

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), every month since June 2023 has ranked as the planet’s hottest since records began.