Cruel summer kills more than 50,000 people in European cities

According to the findings, published in two peer-reviewed papers in the journal Nature Health, about two-thirds of deaths, more than 32,600, are directly related to climate change caused by fossil fuel pollution.

“I think we can say with absolute certainty that the summer of 2026 was probably the worst on record in terms of heat-related mortality across much of Europe,” said Clare Barnes, author of the reports and a researcher on extreme weather and climate change at Imperial College London.

The astounding death toll comes just weeks before international leaders gather in Turkey for the annual UN climate talks, and days after a UN report warned that the chances of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels had vanished.

“We have come a long way to limit the worst impacts of climate change, and governments must understand that without more rapid action and coordination, the situation will only get worse,” Barnes said.

Europe is the continent where warming is happening fastest, and extreme heat, the deadliest form of extreme weather, is already becoming unbearable. Unprecedentedly high temperatures were on the continent from the end of May to the end of August this year.

It was the hottest summer in Western Europe on record, with temperatures around 2.9 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average. However, on some days there were much more significant anomalies, and in some countries temperatures were more than 12 degrees Celsius higher than normal.

To calculate the death toll, scientists compared temperatures in 854 cities in 30 European countries this summer with what would have been expected in the world without climate change.

The researchers then used the results of a peer-reviewed study of the relationship between high temperatures and daily mortality to model the likely number of heat-related deaths between early June and late August. This method has been found to yield estimates of the death toll overall, according to those later obtained by national health authorities.

They estimate that a total of 50,391 people died in the cities from the heat, which is about 40% of the population of the countries studied. The researchers found the death toll is the highest in 26 years and well above previous major European heatwaves in 2022 and 2003.

Southern and Western Europe were hardest hit, but the normally cooler northern regions, including the UK, also killed thousands.

According to the findings, the highest death rates were among people aged 85 and older, but the heatwave can affect anyone, and more than 800 people aged 20 to 44 have died from heat-related causes.

This summer “probably was the most dangerously hot summer Europe has experienced to date,” the report concluded.

Scientists have also found that the role of climate change in heat-related deaths is becoming increasingly apparent. At the start of this century, fossil fuel pollution was responsible for about 40 percent of heat-related deaths, compared to about two-thirds today.

Raquel Nunes, an assistant professor of health and environment at the University of Warwick, said the findings provide “increasing evidence of just how deadly extreme heat can be, despite being called a ‘silent killer’ because its effects are not always immediately apparent.”.

One of the most alarming aspects was that the death toll was also high among young people, with thousands of people under the age of 65 estimated to have died, Nunes adds.

“Until we stop using fossil fuels, summers will get hotter and more dangerous,” Barnes said. This means an even deadlier summer is on the horizon. “These figures are a stark reminder that our hot and extreme summer is having an increasingly serious public health impact,” she added. “Behind these statistics are real people whose lives have been lost and real families who mourn them.”.