An extra 2.3 million temperature-related deaths will occur in Europe’s main cities by the end of this century unless more action is taken to mitigate and adapt to global warming, researchers predict.
In a new paper, published in Nature Medicine, an assessment of 854 cities provides ‘clear evidence’ that temperature-related mortality will increase even under the ‘mildest’ climate change scenario. The net number of deaths increases substantially under ‘more extreme’ warming scenarios and the trend can only be reversed by ‘implausibly’ strong levels of adaptation in cities.
The findings reverse previous health-impact assessments of temperature-related deaths in Europe, which indicated that mortality attributable to cold is ‘much larger’ than that for heat.
