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Heat negatively affects human health and can be fatal. It can cause heat stress and dehydration, worsen heart, respiratory and kidney diseases, or even lead to heat stroke. 

This indicator provides information on the modelled heat-related mortality, based on temperature data and mortality counts.

Caveats

The study uses relatively large areas (NUTS2/3 regions) in some of the analysed countries which may lead to exposure misclassification.

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:

  1. Climatic data: Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), ERA5 Land Reanalysis data.
  2. Population data: Eurostat demographic census data
  3. Mortality data: Eurostat all-cause mortality by sex and age groups

Link to repository with code: 

Ballester, J., 2024, Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022 https://github.com/BallesterJoan/europe_summer_2022_heat/tree/main

 

Additional reading:

  • Ballester, J., et al., 2024, The effect of temporal data aggregation to assess the impact of changing temperatures in Europe: an epidemiological modelling study, The Lancet Regional Health–Europe 36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2023.100779
  • Ballester, J., et al., 2023, Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022,  Nature medicine 29.7: 1857-1866. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z 
  • Martínez-Solanas, È., et al., 2021, Projections of temperature-attributable mortality in Europe: a time series analysis of 147 contiguous regions in 16 countries, The Lancet Planetary Health 5(7), e446-e454. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00150-9
  • Quijal-Zamorano, M., et al., 2021, Seasonality reversal of temperature attributable mortality projections due to previously unobserved extreme heat in Europe, The Lancet Planetary Health 5(9), e573-e575. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00211-
Contributor:
Lancet Countdown in Europe

Published in Climate-ADAPT: Dec 5, 2022

Date of publication:

2024

Keywords:
Excess mortality, Heat stress
Climate impacts:

Extreme Temperatures

Adaptation Approaches:

Observations and Scenarios

Sectors:

Health

Geographic characterisation:

Europe

Health impact:

Heat

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