Heat Related Mortality Burden during the Record-Breaking Summer 2022 in Europe: An Integrated Continental Analysis
Year: 2023
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: BACKGROUND AND AIM: The record-breaking temperatures in the summer of 2003 caused over 70,000 excess deaths in Europe. The resulting societal awareness led to the design and implementation of adaptation strategies to protect vulnerable populations across the continent. We here aimed to quantify the heat related mortality burden of the summer of 2022, the now hottest season on record in Europe, and analyse it within the context of accelerated warming temperatures. METHOD: We analysed a mortality database including 45,184,044 counts of death from 823 contiguous regions in 35 European countries, representing their whole population of over 543 million people. We used quasi-Poisson regression models to calculate the location-specific temperature-lag-mortality relation in each European region, and a multivariate multilevel meta-regression analysis to pool the location-specific coefficients. RESULTS: We estimate that 61,405 (95% CI 59,131-63,719) Europeans died due to the observed heat between May 30th and September 4th. Italy (18,091 deaths; 17,375-18,703), Spain (11,234; 10,462-12,009) and Germany (8,209; 7,033-9,430) were the countries with the largest heat related mortality burden. In relative terms, the largest heat related mortality rates were found in the Mediterranean arch, i.e. Italy (296 deaths per million, 285-306), Greece (281, 261-301), Spain (235, 219-251) and Portugal (217, 198-235). 64% more women than men died prematurely due to heat. CONCLUSIONS: In the context of global warming, with European temperatures rising at a faster rate than the global average, and taking into account the magnitude of heat related mortality in the continent, our results call for a substantial re-evaluation and strengthening of existing heat surveillance platforms, prevention plans and long-term adaptation strategies in Europe.
Source: ISEE Conference Abstracts
Language: English
Subfield: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4390964864