Severe heat killed more than 50,000 people in European cities and towns this summer, according to peer-reviewed estimates released by scientists in London on Friday.
That is three times as many people as would have died had humankind not warmed the planet by burning oil, gas and coal, the researchers said. Their estimates suggest that this summer’s intense heat was Europe’s deadliest by far this century.
The findings, detailed in a pair of studies in the journal Nature Health, are based on a combination of factors that influence heat-related health risks in particular locations, including demographics, socioeconomic indicators and availability of health services.
The estimates are not based on official death reports. Governments usually include fatalities from heatstroke but not necessarily those from cardiovascular and respiratory ailments that are exacerbated by extreme temperatures. That means the true death toll of a heat wave is often underreported.
Large parts of Europe sweated this summer through a series of heat domes, or sprawling weather systems that allow heat to build for days on end. The extra heat trapped around Earth by greenhouse gas emissions allows temperatures during these events to scale even higher, increasing the risks to health.
“Even in a preindustrial climate, for some of these heat waves, we would have expected to see high mortality,” said Clair Barnes, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and lead author of both studies. “But that mortality has been pushed substantially higher by the human-caused warming, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels.”
Temperatures soared repeatedly and without mercy in many of Europe’s major cities this summer, exposing outdoor workers to hazardous conditions and leaving millions more grasping for relief. Furnace-like conditions fueled the largest wildfires in modern history in France and Spain, displacing 300,000 people. All in all, it was Western Europe’s hottest summer on record, and the third hottest for the continent as a whole.
The authors of the new studies focused on mortality in 854 urban areas across 30 nations: the 27 member states of the European Union, plus Britain, Norway and Switzerland. These towns and cities account for roughly 40 percent of the total population of those countries, but they aren’t necessarily representative of Europe as a whole. The researchers chose them because they could obtain the necessary data to estimate heat-related mortality in every summer since 2000.
The scientists’ estimate of 50,391 deaths in these towns and cities this summer suggests a big jump in fatalities over previous years. Heat killed an estimated 29,480 people in the second-deadliest summer, 2022, and 28,462 people in the summer of 2003, when devastating hot spells prompted widespread concern about Europe’s readiness to cope with climate change.
To assess the role of human-caused warming in heat mortality, the researchers first used computer models of the climate to simulate summer temperatures in a world that nations hadn’t warmed by burning coal, oil and gas. The researchers then estimated the number of heat-related deaths across Europe in that hypothetical, cooler world.
The main reason for this year’s estimated jump in mortality is simply the intensity of this summer’s heat, which afflicted large areas of the continent with extraordinary intensity for long stretches of time, said Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, a climate scientist at Imperial who contributed to the new studies.
The estimated number of deaths was significantly higher this summer compared with previous years even after the researchers controlled for increases in urban populations, Dr. Konstantinoudis said. That suggests the jump in 2026 was not the result of shifting demographics.
European governments are paying more attention to the dangers of sweltering temperatures. One sign, Dr. Barnes said, is that health agencies in several nations, including Britain, France, Germany and Spain, have begun issuing estimates of heat deaths while summer is still underway.
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