Millions Of European Heat Deaths Projected As World Warms
HuffPost
Several heat waves have killed thousands of people in the last few years in Europe, with around 70,000 deaths alone in 2003.
Extreme temperatures — mostly heat — are projected to kill as many as 2.3 million people in Europe by the end of the century unless countries get better at reducing carbon pollution and adapting to hotter conditions, a new study says.
Currently, cold temperatures kill more people in Europe than heat by large margins.
But a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used climate simulations of different scenarios and looked at death rates in 854 cities.
They found as it warms cold deaths lessen slowly, but heat deaths soar rapidly.
With few reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and little adaptation like air conditioning and cooling centers, Italy, southern Spain and Greece should see massive increases in the rate of heat deaths due to climate change.
