A study links the summer heat of 2024 to more than 62,700 deaths in Europe.

Barcelona, ​​Sep 22 (EFE).- A study led by ISGlobal links heat waves in the summer of 2024 with more than 62,700 deaths in Europe, more than 6,700 of them in Spain, and estimates more than 181,000 heat-related deaths in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

This study has been published in the journal Nature Medicine and was sponsored by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation.

The year 2024 broke several temperature records, and according to the research team, it was the hottest year on record and its summer was also the hottest to date.

This mortality figure - 62,775 deaths in 2024 in Europe between June 1 and September 30 - is 23.6% higher than the approximately 50,800 estimated for the summer of 2023 but 8.1% lower than the approximately 67,900 estimated for the summer period of 2022.

Italy and Spain, the countries with the highest number of deaths

The study focused on 654 regions in 32 European countries, and the data extracted indicates that Italy had the highest number of heat-related deaths, with just over 19,000 deaths estimated for the summer of 2024.

In the preceding summers of 2023 and 2022, Italy also had the highest number of heat-related deaths, with nearly 13,800 and nearly 18,800 estimated deaths, respectively.

Spain is second in terms of estimated mortality in the summer of 2024, with more than 6,700 deaths, followed by Germany (close to 6,300), Greece (close to 6,000), and Romania (more than 4,900).

In Spain, the estimated number of deaths in 2024 was about half that of 2022, due to lower temperatures than in the previous two summers.

Greece and Bulgaria, countries with the highest mortality rates

In terms of mortality incidence, the countries with the highest rate of heat-related deaths for the same period were Greece (574 estimated deaths per million people), Bulgaria (530 deaths per million) and Serbia (379 deaths per million).

These rates are significantly higher than those estimated for the previous two summers in the study, where the highest was 373 deaths per million in Greece in 2023. Overall, 15 of the 32 countries assessed recorded their highest heat-related burden and mortality rates during the summer of 2024.

Differences by sex and age

The number of heat-related deaths was higher among women and older adults throughout the three summers studied (2022, 2023, and 2024).

Specifically, it is estimated that in the summer of 2024, the number of heat-related deaths among women was 46.7% higher than among men, while the estimated mortality rate among people over 75 was 323% higher than for all other age groups combined.

Areas with greater vulnerability

Regional differences in average temperature are not fully reflected in mortality, as estimated deaths for 2024 were higher than those for summer 2023 and only slightly lower than those for 2022.

Tomáš Janoš, a researcher at ISGlobal and first author of the study, explains that this is because the highest temperatures in 2022 and 2024 were in southwestern and southeastern Europe, "in both cases areas of high vulnerability to heat."

"Europe is the continent that is warming the fastest, at twice the global average. And within it, the Mediterranean basin and the southeastern regions are emerging as major climate change hotspots," the same researcher explains.

These regions are those with "the greatest impacts on health, with a substantial increase in mortality projections" throughout the 21st century, he adds.