European countries reported more than 10,000 excess deaths during the record-breaking heat wave ?that engulfed the west of the continent in late June, official data showed.
The vast majority of deaths ¡ª more than 9,000 ¡ª were among people ages 65 and above, according to data published by EuroMOMO, a network backed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and ?Control and the World Health Organization.
Extreme heat can kill by causing heat ?stroke?or ?aggravating cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, with older people among the most ?vulnerable.
¡°To have this kind of excess at this time of year is unusual. It¡¯s really high,¡± said Lasse Vestergaard, chief physician at Denmark¡¯s Statens Serum Institut, which hosts ?EuroMOMO.
¡°It is difficult to explain this high excess mortality by anything but the extreme ?heat,¡± Vestergaard added.
Scientists have said the late-June heat wave would have been ¡°virtually impossible¡± without human-caused climate change, which is making heat waves more ?frequent and intense.
The data, pooled from ?national mortality statistics in the U.K. and European countries, included excess deaths from all causes, not just heat-related ones, during the week ?of June 22 ?to 28, when the heat wave peaked in France, Spain, ?Britain and other countries.
Climate change pushed temperatures between 3 degrees Celsius?and 4 C higher than they would otherwise have been, an effect that taken in isolation is responsible for more than 40% of the deaths recorded, the researchers said.
¡°Heat waves are the most dangerous kind of extreme weather,¡± said Clair Barnes, a research associate in extreme weather and climate change at Imperial College London. ¡°This extreme heat that we are now exposed to because of human-caused climate change is extremely dangerous to human health.¡±
But scientists said there were no other known major ?factors, such ?as COVID-19 outbreaks, that would have contributed to the spike to 10,650 excess deaths in that week.
The same European countries¡¯ combined mortality over the previous eight weeks was, on average, around 500 deaths per week below typical levels. ?The EuroMOMO data could be revised in future weeks as more data comes in.
The extreme heat wave at the end of June disrupted power supplies, shut schools?and smashed temperature records in France, Spain and the U.K.
EuroMOMO does not publish excess deaths per ?individual country, ?but it noted that France and Belgium were the only ?two countries in Europe to log ¡°very high excess¡± mortality in the last week of ?June.
Belgium¡¯s excess mortality was the highest during any heat wave in records going back to 2000, according to the country¡¯s public health institute Sciensano.
A separate scientific study, published on Monday, estimated 2,700 people died from heat-related causes in England ?and Wales alone, during the May and June heat waves.
Of those deaths, 42% were caused by the extra heat that global warming contributed to the heat waves, according to the findings by Imperial College London, the U.K. Met Office and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
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