This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Europe saw at least 30,000 excess deaths across a blistering summer of back-to-back heat waves and drought that scientists have blamed on man-made climate change, according to provisional figures. Between mid-July and mid-August, the continent's EuroMomo monitoring platform estimates that Europe saw more than 32,000 excess deaths—with the summer not yet over.
While EuroMomo does not publish breakdowns of deaths by country, various national health authorities have published provisional tolls covering comparable periods stretching roughly between the end of May and August. An count of those tallies found 33,000 excess deaths or deaths directly linked to the heat across just eight countries: Austria, Belgium, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. According to EuroMomo's latest weekly estimates, the last week of June appears to have been the summer's deadliest, with nearly 16,000 excess deaths recorded.
The first week of July follows in second place with some 8,000 deaths. Both weeks coincided with one of the recurring exceptional heat waves in which Europeans baked this summer, while widespread droughts provided ideal tinder-dry conditions for raging wildfires. As EuroMomo's most recent estimates will be refined over the next weeks, the total excess death toll is set to evolve.
The monitor's model only includes official statistics from 23 European countries and excludes part of the continent's east. Germany, the European Union's most populous country with 82 million people, saw 14,000 deaths linked to the heat waves through Aug. 9, according to official figures. That tally is a record since such records began in 2016, according to the Robert Koch Institute.
Like in other European countries, people over the age of 75 suffered the most, the institute said. France has already logged 7,300 excess deaths across the sweltering period between late May and July 22, according to the provisional toll from the public health authorities. The summer's tally is all but certain to rise, as the long heat wave that began in late July has just come to an end.
Nearly 4,500 deaths blamed on the heat were recorded in Spain between June 1 and Aug. 19—the highest for that time of year since 2022, according to the Carlos III Health Institute. July was mainland Spain's joint-hottest month since records began in 1961, tied with July 2022, according to the AEMET national weather agency. The UK health and safety authority estimates that England saw 2,877 heat-related deaths across May and June's heat waves, threatening to topple the historic tally of 2,985 from the summer of 2022.
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