Event: Europe

Europe’s summer of extreme heat caused an estimated 50,000 deaths in cities across the region — the highest number on record — and wiped roughly 0.17% from European Union gross domestic product from April through September, or close to €17 billion ($18.9 billion).Those findings, from two separate studies, reveal the extent of Europe’s vulnerability to rising temperatures in what’s likely to be one of the hottest years in modern history.The estimated death toll comes from a study released Friday, led by scientists at Imperial College London, which determined that almost two-thirds of the deaths linked to high summer temperatures would not have happened without climate change. A recent study from Bloomberg Economics, meanwhile, measured the hit to Europe’s GDP at 2.5 times the average loss for the period over the previous decade.The overall mortality level, triggered by a series of record-breaking heat waves, was far higher than those in the next most deadly years. The figure compares to about 29,000 heat-related deaths in cities in 2022 and about 28,000 in 2003, according to the research, which is due to be published in Nature Health this week.“We had these repeated heat events that — even without the extra heat from anthropogenic warming — would’ve been dangerous, but with that extra boost from anthropogenic warming became really, really dangerous,” said Clair Barnes, extreme weather and climate change researcher at Imperial College London and the study’s lead author, in an interview.European countries experienced extreme temperatures throughout the summer. Heat waves began in May and continued into September, with temperature records broken by significant margins in many countries. Average temperatures in Western Europe were nearly 3 degrees Celsius higher than the summer average between 1991 and 2020, with some days as much as 12 C higher.Across the continent, vital infrastructure suffered. Wildfires destroyed homes,…