Study projects millions of European heat deaths when the world warms up

Extreme temperatures – usually heat – are expected to become no fewer than 2.3 million people in Europe towards the end of the century, unless countries are getting better in reducing carbon pollution and adapting to hotter circumstances, says a new study.

Currently, cold temperatures are killing more people in Europe than heat with large margins. But a team of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used climate simulations from different scenarios and looked at death rates in 854 cities. They discovered that it is slowly decreasing the cold deaths, but the heat deaths rise rapidly.

With few reductions of greenhouse gases and little adjustment such as air conditioning and cooling centers, Italy, South Spain and Greece should see an enormous increase in the speed of heat -asterfalls due to climate change. On the other hand, a large part of Scandinavia and the United Kingdom will see less temperature -related deaths, usually due to moderating cold temperatures, the study In Monday’s diary Nature Medicine found.

But even in the most optimistic scenarios with carbon dioxide emissions of coal, oil and gas, sharp and mass rise is cutting a net increase in temperature-related deaths when the world warms up, said research author Pierre Masselot, an environmental epidemiologist and statistician.

The decrease in the cold dead in the north is not as populated in places as places further south, where the heat really starts and hurts, Masselot said.

“The Mediterranean Sea is a so -called climate hotspot,” said Masselot. “It is a region that warms up much faster than the rest of the world. And Malta is in the middle of it.”

The study projects the temperature -related mortality rate of Malta towards the end of the century with 269 people for every 100,000. Ireland, on the other hand, will fall slightly, 15 per 100,000 people.

In general, West -Europe is richer administration better than Eastern Europe, said Masselot.

Several heat waves have killed thousands of people in Europe in recent years, but one in 2003 is the largest with About 70,000 dead.

Large cities with many people near the Mediterranean Sea can see the bodies accumulating for the rest of the century. The study says that in the worst case they were studying that Barcelona could see nearly a quarter of a million extra temperature -related deaths, while Rome and Naples are killed nearly 150,000.

In a scenario with carbon pollution only slightly worse than the current trends and no extra adjustment to heat, the Masselot team found more than 5.8 million excess heat deaths only due to climate change, but also almost 3.5 million fewer cold deaths. The team has one Interactive website Where cities and various factors can be adjusted.

The Masselot team was also able to isolate climate change, whereby an important factor of an aging population was removed that made the research even more useful and more impressive, said the public health of the University of Washington and climate scientist Kristie Ebi, who was not part of the study.

“This is very good with what we would expect,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, a Canadian doctor and vice chairman of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. She was not part of the study. “If you think about summer temperatures in places like Rome – they start to enter the 40s (104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit) …. that is very heat stress/heat material territory for healthy young people and very dangerous for older people, especially when they have no air conditioning. “

Europe with older housing stock and not much air conditioning needs an enormous amount of adjustment, such as central air, more green space and cooling centers, to lower the expected death rates, Masselot said. Noord -America has less chance of such a strong trend, he said.

Another factor is that the aging of Europe makes its population more vulnerable, Masselot said.

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