by Extreme warmth is a murderer and its influence becomes far more fatal, since the climate crisis caused by humans charge the temperatures, according to a new study in which global warming has tripled the number of deaths in the latest European heat wave.
For more than a week, the temperatures have risen over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in many parts of Europe. Tourist attractions closed, forest fires experienced several countries, and people fought to deal with a continent on which the air conditioning is rare.
The result was fatal. It is estimated that thousands of people have lost their lives, according to a Rapid study published on Wednesday, published on Wednesday.
A team of researchers under the direction of Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined between June 23 and July 2 in 12 European cities, including London, Paris, Athens, 10 days of extreme heat.
They used historical weather data to calculate how intensely the heat would have been if people had not burned fossil fuels and heated the world by 1.3 degrees Celsius. They found that climate change made the heat wave of Europe 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 7.2 Fahrenheit).
The scientists then used research on the relationship between heat and daily deaths to estimate how many people have lost their lives.
They found about 2,300 people in ten days of heat in the 12 cities, around 1,500 more than in a world without climate change. In other words, global heating was responsible for 65% of the total fatalities.
“The results show how relatively low in the hottest temperatures in the death level,” wrote the authors of the study.
Warmth has a particularly harmful effect on people with underlying health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and breathing problems.
People over the age of 65 were most affected and made 88% of excess deaths according to analysis. But heat can be fatal for everyone. Almost 200 of the estimated deaths in the 12 cities were under 20 to 65 years.
Climate change was responsible for the vast majority of the heat deaths in some cities. In Madrid, about 90% of the estimated death waves made it out, as the analysis stated.
The focus of the study on 12 cities makes it only a snapshot of the actual heat waves on the entire continent that the researchers could appreciate up to tens of thousands of people.
“Heat waves leave no trace of destruction such as forest fires or storms,” said Ben Clarke, study author and researcher at Imperial College London. “Their effects are largely invisible, but quietly devastating – a change of only 2 or 3 degrees Celsius can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people.”
The world has to stop burning fossil fuels to prevent heat waves from becoming hotter and fattening, and the cities urgently need to adapt, Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London. “It is absolutely important to switch to renewable energies, to build cities, withstand extreme heat and protect the poorest and most endangered protégés,” she said.
Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the University of Reading, who was not involved in the analysis, said: “Robust techniques in this study leave no doubt that climate change is already a fatal force in Europe.”
Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading, who was also not involved in the report, said that the study had added large amounts of evidence that climate change makes heat waves more intensive, “which means that a moderate heat becomes dangerous and the heat becomes unexpected”.
It is not only heat that is charged into the hotter world, Allan added. “As part of the globe baking and burns, another region can suffer intensive precipitation and catastrophic floods.”
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