In just three days during the heatwave between June 24 and 26 , extreme heat may have caused around 12,000 excess deaths in Europe . This is according to a predictive study published in the Economist, which took into account the average temperatures forecast for the period in 854 European cities combined with a model developed by Pierre Masselot and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on the relationship between temperature and mortality.
According to this model , the number of victims is determined not only by absolute temperatures, but also by their anomaly and local characteristics : 30°C in Manchester is much more lethal than in Madrid, because neither the bodies nor the buildings are adapted to withstand it.
The method applied to different cities does not take into account certain factors such as humidity, but it does partially take into account nighttime heat, which is one of the reasons this heat wave has been so dangerous, as the body has little time to recover. The greatest increase in mortality rate, in this analysis, concerns Paris, where the risk of death could increase by over 300%. In the Parisian capital, the consequences will be greater, perhaps due to the heating effect of the city's characteristic gray zinc roofs. The risk of death in London could increase by around 200%; in Milan, by 170%; while Rome is just over 100%.
Clair Barnes of Imperial College London and her colleagues estimate that 24,400 people died from extreme heat between June and August 2025, The Economist reports. Older people tend to be the most vulnerable: 85% of last year's victims were over 65.
(Unioneonline)
