The sizzling summer of 2022 left an indelible mark on Europe’s history books, as it emerged as the hottest summer ever recorded on the continent. A groundbreaking study unveiled on Monday unveiled the devastating toll of this unprecedented heatwave, with a staggering count of more than 61,000 fatalities attributed to a relentless onslaught of scorching heat, parching droughts, and ravaging forest fires.
While the European statistical office, Eurostat, had previously reported abnormally high excess mortality during that period, the proportion of deaths directly attributable to the blistering heat had remained unquantified.
Employing innovative models, researchers hailing from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and France’s esteemed health research institute, INSERM, undertook the task of predicting temperature-related deaths for each region throughout the entirety of the summer of 2022.
Their findings were nothing short of alarming: a staggering estimate of 61,672 lives lost due to the sweltering heatwave spanning from May 30 to September 4 of the previous year. The study, published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine, shed light on the devastating consequences of extreme heat events.
Hicham Achebak, a researcher from INSERM and co-author of the study, expressed his concern, stating, “It is an alarming number of deaths,” underscoring the gravity of the situation.
