The study’s focus on 12 cities makes it just a snapshot of the true heat wave death toll across the continent, which researchers estimate could be up to tens of thousands of people.
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“Heatwaves don’t leave a trail of destruction like wildfires or storms,” said Ben Clarke, a study author and a researcher at Imperial College London. “Their impacts are mostly invisible but quietly devastating — a change of just 2 or 3 degrees Celsius can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people.”
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The world must stop burning fossil fuels to stop heat waves becoming hotter and deadlier and cities need to urgently adapt, said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. “Shifting to renewable energy, building cities that can withstand extreme heat, and protecting the poorest and most vulnerable is absolutely essential,” she said.

Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the University of Reading who was not involved in the analysis, said “robust techniques used in this study leave no doubt that climate change is already a deadly force in Europe.”

Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading who was also not involved in the report, said the study added to huge amounts of evidence that climate change is making heat waves more intense, “meaning that moderate heat becomes dangerous and record heat becomes unprecedented.”

It’s not just heat that’s being supercharged in out hotter world, Allan added. “As one part of the globe bakes and burns, another region can suffer intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding.”