Around 2,300 people died in 12 European cities due to an extreme heat wave that hit the region from June 23 to July 2, a rapid scientific analysis has found.
Researchers also estimated that roughly 1,500 of those deaths, or 65%, were attributable to anthropogenic climate change.
“Climate change has made it significantly hotter than it would have been, which in turn makes it a lot more dangerous,” Ben Clarke, a researcher at Imperial College London, told Reuters.
The heat wave, which hit most of Europe and northern Asia in June and early July, was found to be 2-4° Celsius (3.6-7.2° Fahrenheit) hotter during the 10-day stretch than it would have been without fossil fuel-driven climate change in 11 of the 12 cities evaluated.
The study’s authors looked at a dozen large metropolitan centers in Europe, including Rome, London, Paris and Frankfurt, and found that only Lisbon experienced a smaller climate-driven increase, of less than 2°C.
Data on the actual number of observed deaths during the heat wave weren’t officially available at the time of the analysis, so the researchers estimated excess heat-related deaths that may have occurred during the 10-day period by using epidemiological models that establish the relationship between heat and deaths as well as historical mortality data.
They estimate there were 2,305 excess heat-related deaths during the heat wave, with 1,504 deaths attributable to climate change. More than 80% of the deaths were estimated for those older than 65 years.
While heat-related deaths tend to be underreported officially, the media did report several such cases during the heat wave.
In Italy, Brahim Ait El Hajjam, a 47-year-old construction worker and business owner, died while working on a building site near Bologna, Italy. Following his death, the regional government prohibited outdoor work under direct sun from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. until Sept. 15.
In Spain, where June temperatures “smashed” historical records, according to Spain’s meteorological agency, a 2-year-old boy who had been locked in a car for four hours from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. died of heatstroke in Tarragona on July 1.
On July 2, two people died in a wildfire in rural Lleida, a province in Catalonia that had not recorded wildfire deaths since 2012.
Several cities across Europe reported record June temperatures, including 46.6°C (115.9°F) on June 29 in Mora, a town in the Évora district of eastern Portugal. England faced its warmest June since records began in 1884, according to the U.K. Met Office.
The heat wave was also felt across much of Asia, with Japan’s June temperatures at their historical highest since record-keeping began in 1898, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
In Kazakhstan, air temperatures 7°C (12.6°F) degrees above average deformed roads, while in South Korea, 59 out of 97 climate observation stations recorded new all-time highs.
Banner image: A man fans himself on a hot day in Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain, on June 28, 2025. Image © Paul White/AP.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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