United States: Several studies focusing on the severe summer in Europe in 2022 found that about 50% of deaths from heat waves would have been prevented had it not been for human activities that led to climate change.
“Without strong action, record temperatures and heat-related mortality will continue to rise in the coming years,” opined Joan Ballester Claramunt, the study’s senior author. He’s currently an associate research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Spain, as reported by HealthDay.
Widespread Impact
Data presented point to more than 68,000 people being killed by heat-caused parameters in Europe alone during the summer of 2022.
To start with, the Barcelona team looked at how much warmer the Earth’s surface has been getting due to human activity through changes in the global mean surface temperature anomalies between 1880 and 2022.
They were then able to subtract actual recorded temperatures from temperatures that would exist if there was no anthropogenic global warming.
Based on that data, they predicted the expected heat-related deaths (under no climate change scenario) and the number of Europeans who died from heat in June, the hottest summer of 2022.
The result: High temperatures exacerbated by man-made climate change were blamed for half of those fatalities, the Spanish team established.
Significant Consequences
That’s an excess of over 38,000 deaths in 32 European countries in summer 2022.
For instance, although high temperatures compared to norms seemed lethal more for women than men and potent for the elderly (80 or older) than youth, the study also established, as reported by HealthDay.
Public Health Implications
“This study sheds light on the extent to which global warming impacts public health,” study first author Thessa Beck, a meteorologist and climatologist at the Barcelona institute, said in an institute news release.