Deaths due to heat in Europe could skyrocket: study

PanARMENIAN.Net - Deaths due to extreme weather in Europe could increase fifty-fold from an estimated 3,000 per year recently to 152,000 by century's end if global warming is not reined in, researchers warned Saturday, August 5, according to AFP.

The toll would be especially high in temperate southern Europe, where deaths due to warming are projected to rise from 11 per million people per year to about 700 per million per year, they wrote in The Lancet Planetary Health.

Heatwaves will do most of the damage, claiming some 99 percent of future weather-related deaths -- more than 151,000 of the annual total by 2100 from about 2,700 per year recently.

"Unless global warming is curbed as a matter of urgency and appropriate adaptation measures are taken, about 350 million Europeans could be exposed to harmful climate extremes on an annual basis by the end of this century," said the report, based on pessimistic global warming forecasts.

The researchers looked at records of weather-related events in Europe -- the 28 European Union members plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland -- for a 30-year stretch from 1981 to 2010 -- called the "reference period".

They then compared this to projections for population growth and migration, as well as predictions for future heatwaves, cold snaps, wildfires, droughts, floods and windstorms.

"We found that weather-related disasters could affect about two-thirds of the European population annually by the year 2100," wrote four European Commission researchers.

This translated to about 351 million people exposed per year, compared to about 25 million per year in the reference period, when it was just five percent of the population.