With some 18,000 deaths, Italy saw the highest toll
The 2022 summer European heatwave was the hottest on record and claimed more lives than the summer 2003 heatwave, which killed some 70,000 people. Photo: iStock
More than 61,000 people in Europe died during the 2022 summer heatwave, which lasted from May 30 to September 4, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Previously, the World Meteorological Organization estimated that Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Portugal saw over 15,000 excess deaths. Excess death is the difference between the observed and the expected number of deaths in a specific period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 2022 summer European Heatwave was the hottest season on record. It surpassed the summer 2003 heatwave, which was responsible for some 70,000 deaths.
The death toll in the 2022 event was high despite countries having adaptation plans in place.
"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 in place, suggests that the adaptation strategies currently available may still be insufficient," said Hicham Achebak, a researcher at Barcelona Institute for Global Health and one of the study’s author.
Researchers from France, Spain and Switzerland analysed the temperature and mortality data from 2015-2022 in 823 regions across 35 European countries, home to more than 543 million people.
These data were fed to the epidemiological models, which then predicted the number of mortalities attributed to heat for each region and week.
They found that summer mean temperatures between 2013 and 2022 climbed at a rate of 0.142 degree Celsius per year, compared with the average rate of 0.028°C annually from 1991–2012.
The heatwave was most pronounced between July 18 and 24, where 11,637 heat-related deaths were recorded, especially in central and southern Europe.
Some 36,848 deaths were recorded among people aged over 79 years, followed by 9,226 deaths among those between 65 and 79 years of age and 4,822 fatalities in those under 65 years.
“Exposure to extreme heat, especially during summers such as in 2022, may differentially exacerbate preexisting or chronic risks among women and men in each age group,” the paper read.
Women suffered a higher toll than men. The mortality attributed to heat stress was 63 per cent higher in women than in men.
In women aged over 80 years, the fatality rate was 27 per cent higher than that of men. However, the mortality rate was 41 per cent higher in men under 65 and 13 per cent higher in those aged 65-79.
“Differences in age structure between men and women partly explained the higher risk for women at advanced ages and for men at younger ages,” the researchers wrote in their study.
Among the countries, southwestern Europe witnessed a higher deviation of temperature from normal, with the highest national values in France, followed by Switzerland, Italy, Hungary and Spain.
With some 18,000 deaths, Italy saw the highest number of deaths that could be traced back to excess heat. Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom were ranked second, third and fourth, with 11,000, 8,000, and 4,000 heat-attributable deaths reseptively in the summer of 2022.
“Despite the fact that many European countries activated heat prevention plans during the summer of 2022, the estimation of over 60,000 heat-related deaths suggests that prevention plans were only partially effective,” the researchers wrote in their study.
They also estimated that the continent could face more than 68,000 premature deaths each summer by 2030 and more than 94,000 by 2040 if adaptation plans are not strengthened. Europe has been experiencing up to 1°C more warming than the global average.
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