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Study: Europe's 2026 summer heat killed more than 50,000 in cities
Science reports a Nature Health-accepted study estimating more than 50,000 heat-related deaths in European cities this summer, with about two-thirds attributed to human-caused warming.
- science.org is now reporting this
- New headline Was: “Europe's summer heat wave killed more han 50k people in urban areas”
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A study accepted for publication in Nature Health estimates that more than 50,000 people died from excess heat in European cities during summer 2026, Science magazine reported Sunday1.
Warren Cornwall, writing for Science, said researchers at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine produced the first continentwide death estimate for this summer, covering 854 cities1. The modeled urban toll is nearly double estimates for European cities in the 2003 and 2022 heat waves, according to the report1.
The scientists built a model of expected daily heat-related deaths from the observed relationship between heat and excess deaths in 232 of those cities from 2000 to 2019, Science said1. People 85 and older accounted for an estimated 22,500 deaths, and another 14,100 were ages 75 to 841. Southern Europe had 380 heat-related deaths per million people, compared with 129 in Northern Europe and 277 in Eastern and Western Europe1.
Using weather records and climate models of a heat wave without industrial greenhouse gas pollution, the researchers concluded temperatures would have been as much as 2.8 degrees Celsius lower and that 32,600 fewer heat-related deaths would have occurred, Science reported1. That is about two-thirds of the estimated urban deaths1. Lead author Clair Barnes of Imperial College London said shifts of a few degrees in summer heat can be the difference between life and death for thousands of people1.
Kristie Ebi, a climate epidemiologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study, told Science that almost all those deaths are preventable1. Science noted that a 2024 Nature Medicine paper found existing heat-safety measures reduced Europe's 2023 heat-wave death toll, which still exceeded 47,0001.
The paper had been accepted but not yet published when Science reported; independent review of the final journal version is not described in the news article1.