The heat waves that hit Europe throughout 2022 caused 16,300 deaths, in a year when the temperature in this continent was 2.3°C above the pre-industrial average (1850 -1900), used as a reference for the Paris Agreement on climate change.
These numbers are from the International Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) collected in a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) released this Monday (19).
“Unprecedented heat stress suffered by Europeans in 2022 was a leading cause of excess climate-related deaths in Europe. Unfortunately, this cannot be considered an isolated event or a climatic oddity,” said C3S director Carlo Buontempo.
In this sense, he warned that the evolution of the climate system shows that these types of events are part of a pattern “that will make extreme thermal stress more frequent and intense throughout the region”.
According to EM-DAT data, meteorological, hydrological and climate hazards – storms, floods, forest fires, landslides and extreme temperatures – killed 16,365 people last year and directly affected 156,000 people.
Floods and storms represent 67% of the events and were responsible for most of the total economic damage, whose invoice amounted to US$ 2.13 billion.
Much more serious, in terms of mortality, were the heat waves, which accounted for 99.6% of deaths, according to the report on the State of the Climate in Europe in 2022 by the WMO and the C3S, which boils down to an increase in temperatures, low rainfall, more wildfires and unprecedented melting of glaciers.
The document confirms that Europe has warmed twice the global average since the 1980s, with far-reaching impacts on the region’s socio-economic fabric and ecosystems.
The second edition of this report coincides with the celebration in Dublin, Ireland, of the VI European Conference on Adaptation to Climate Change and seeks to provide data adjusted to the specific needs of each region so that they can improve their adaptation and mitigation strategies.
#Heat #waves #caused #deaths #Europe #report