eea flag

The summer of 2022 was one of the hottest seasons on record in Europe, characterised by an intense series of heatwaves which lead to drought, fire activity and temperature extremes. People over 65 years of age, particularly those with chronic medical conditions (such as diabetes and heart, lung and kidney disease), are among the most vulnerable to the health effects of heatwaves. Their exposure to heat waves can lead to negative health outcomes. 

This indicator presents the change in heatwave exposure of the elderly over time.

Caveats

To estimate the change in proportion of people over 65, data from diverse sources were combined. This has been subject to limited validation.

Reference information

Websites:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(24)00055-0/fulltext
https://www.lancetcountdown.org/europe/
Source:

Publication:

  • van Daalen, K. R., et al., 2024, The 2024 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: unprecedented warming demands unprecedented action, The Lancet Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(24)00055-0

Data sources:

Climatic data:

  • Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), ERA5 Land Reanalysis data

Population data: 

  • NASA-SEDAC Gridded Population of the World (GPW) v4   
  • Eurostat demographic census data

Additional reading:

Contributor:
Lancet Countdown in Europe

Published in Climate-ADAPT: Feb 9, 2021

Date of publication:

2024

Keywords:
Heat stress
Climate impacts:

Extreme Temperatures

Adaptation Approaches:

Observations and Scenarios, Vulnerability Assessment, Climate services

Sectors:

Health

Geographic characterisation:

Europe

Health impact:

Heat

Language preference detected

Do you want to see the page translated into ?

Exclusion of liability
This translation is generated by eTranslation, a machine translation tool provided by the European Commission.