--- title: A Record-Setting Year of Heat-Related Deaths in Europe description: A new study quantifies for the first time how many deaths in Europe last summer could be attributed to the heat, rising due to climate change. canonical: https://time.com/6292986/europe-heat-deaths-2022-climate-change/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-07-10T15:05:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:03:36.219Z article:section: Health og:title: A Record-Setting Year of Heat-Related Deaths in Europe og:description: A new study quantifies for the first time the number of heat-related deaths in Europe last summer. og:url: https://time.com/6292986/europe-heat-deaths-2022-climate-change/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4fb082081a0929ab/698a3e77b3fce313770caa03/GettyImages-1162796627-e1689001230834.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1600 og:image:height: 900 og:image:alt: Global warming from the sun and burning, Heatwave hot sun, Climate change, Heatwave hot sun, Heat stroke og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Record-Setting Year of Heat-Related Deaths in Europe twitter:description: A new study quantifies for the first time the number of heat-related deaths in Europe last summer. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4fb082081a0929ab/698a3e77b3fce313770caa03/GettyImages-1162796627-e1689001230834.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # More Europeans Died Because of Heat in 2022 Than Any Year in Recorded History > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: Are You Working Outside in a Heatwave? Tell TIME About It [Watch (HLS stream): Are You Working Outside in a Heatwave? Tell TIME About It](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/pAvD2p6S.m3u8) (1:01)  _Published 2023-07-10. Nearly one fifth of Americans have jobs that require them to be outdoors for most of the day. Are you one of them? Let us know how heat impacts your work._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jul 10, 2023 3:05 PM UTC  Global warming from the sun and burning, Heatwave hot sun, Climate change, Heatwave hot sun, Heat stroke Global warming from the sun and burning, Heatwave hot sun, Climate change, Heatwave hot sun, Heat stroke Chuchart Duangdaw—Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jul 10, 2023 3:05 PM UTC As the Earth continues to warm, the rising temperatures are contributing to a number of health conditions that are in turn driving up mortality. And for the first time, scientists have figured out a more detailed way to estimate how many deaths can be attributed to heat. In a [paper published in ](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z)[_Nature Medicine_](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z), researchers in Spain and France calculated that more than 61,000 deaths in Europe could be blamed on the heat during the summer of 2022, the hottest summer on record for the continent. (At least until the readings from 2023 are analyzed later this year.) “We are probably not aware of how heat is a silent killer,” says Joan Ballester, professor at ISGlobal, a private research foundation in Barcelona, and lead author of the paper. While health experts have known that rising temperatures can contribute to an [increase in potentially fatal conditions](https://time.com/6186988/extreme-heat-human-body-impact/) such as [heat stroke and an increase in heart-related events](https://time.com/6202849/extreme-heat-health-risks/) such as heart attacks, irregular heart beats, and even heart failure, few studies have quantified how much heat can contribute to higher mortality. Using carefully calibrated data on temperatures recorded during the peak of the European heat wave in 35 countries from the end of May to the beginning of September last summer, and correlating that information with more than 45 million similarly temporally calibrated deaths across Europe, the scientists found a strong association between increased temperatures and higher mortality. They adjusted for the fact that deaths would lag by a few days behind periods of high temperatures, as the [health effects of heat](https://time.com/6196564/climate-change-obesity-long-term-health-impacts/) may take a few days to manifest, as well as for the expected mortality in the absence of excessive heat. After creating models that tracked short-term fluctuations in temperature and mortality, they found that on warmer days and shortly thereafter, mortality increased. Using that method, they found that, of the 35 countries investigated, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the U.K., and Greece recorded the highest number of heat-related deaths during the summer of 2022\. Most of these deaths occurred during a five-week heat wave from mid-July to mid-August. By comparison, there were around 40,000 heat-related deaths in Europe in 2018 and 2019, and 33,000 in 2020. --- ### More from TIME --- [**_Are you working outside in a heat wave? Tell us about it_**](http://time.com/extreme-heat)**_._** How is heat contributing to more deaths? Ballester says heat basically becomes an added risk factor for people with existing health problems, including heart and immune conditions. Heat acts as a stressor on those already precarious systems, for example, by placing further burden on the heart as it tries to pump harder to push more blood to the extremities and skin in an attempt to cool the body’s core. If external temperatures are too high, then “the physiological limit of the cardiovascular system is exceeded,” says Ballester. The study also found some interesting differences based on age and gender. [Heat-related deaths](https://time.com/6198720/heatwave-health-death-toll/) were higher among men than women through age 64, but the gender difference reversed among the elderly, with more women than men dying of heat-related issues. That may be related to the fact that men tend to experience heart-related events, including deaths, at earlier ages than women, so may have died before making it to older age. The group also found that in all age and sex groups, countries in the Mediterranean—Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal—recorded higher mortality rates than countries in central or northern Europe. Social and economic factors such as the robustness of the health care infrastructure and the design of cities, including the amount of green spaces urban areas contain, could account for some of those differences. **_Read more on extreme heat:_** * The art of [**air conditioner maintenance**](https://time.com/6292834/air-conditioner-filter-health-tips/?utm%5Fsource=healthrecirc) * How to [**sleep when it’s really hot outside**](https://time.com/6291185/how-to-sleep-when-its-hot/?utm%5Fsource=healthrecirc) * Why extreme heat is [**so bad for the human body**](https://time.com/6202849/extreme-heat-health-risks/?utm%5Fsource=healthrecirc) * How to [**build up your heat tolerance for a hotter world**](https://time.com/6207087/improve-heat-tolerance/?utm%5Fsource=healthrecirc) Ballester hopes the data raise awareness of how much heat is impacting health in the world, and appreciation of the urgency of bringing heat-related deaths down. “They are preventable,” he says. “One way to deal with the effects of heat is to improve the health conditions that make people more vulnerable to heat’s effects—improving the cardiovascular health of people, especially the elderly, will automatically turn into an improvement in our prevention efforts on the effects of heat. 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