This summer saw over 50,000 heat-related deaths in Europe, marking a record high. Research published in Nature Health showed that climate change caused two-thirds of these fatalities. Clair Barnes said, "These numbers are a stark reminder that our hotter, more extreme summers are having an increasingly severe impact on public health."
This summer was the deadliest on record for heat-related deaths in Europe's cities, with over 50,000 fatalities across the continent. The shocking figure comes from two peer-reviewed studies published in Nature Health. The research found that around two-thirds of these deaths were directly linked to climate change and fossil fuel pollution.
The studies were co-authored by Clair Barnes, an extreme weather and climate change researcher at Imperial College London.
I think we can be quite confident in stating that the summer of 2026 is likely to have been the worst on record for heat-related mortality across much of Europe, she told CNN.
The research used temperature data from 854 cities across 30 European countries to estimate the death toll.
The researchers compared this summer's temperatures to those expected in a world without climate change.
They then used peer-reviewed data on the link between high temperatures and daily deaths to model heat-related fatalities from June to August.
The study estimated 50,391 heat-related deaths across cities that account for about 40% of the population in these countries.
The death rate was highest among people aged 85 and older, but thousands of heat-related deaths were also estimated among those under 65.
The study found that the share of deaths due to climate breakdown has risen from about 40% at the start of the century to 65%.
Raquel Nunes, an associate professor at the University of Warwick, was quoted as saying that these results add to growing evidence of how deadly extreme heat can be.
Barnes warned that without reducing fossil fuel dependency, summers will become even deadlier.
These numbers are a stark reminder that our hotter, more extreme summers are having an increasingly severe impact on public health, she said.
The studies come ahead of the annual UN climate talks in Turkey and after a UN report stated the world has missed its chance to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.