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Peer-reviewedCC BYNature health

Heat-related urban mortality attributable to human-induced climate change in Europe from 2000 to 2025

  • Clair Barnes1
  • Pierre Masselot2
  • Di Xi3
  • Ben Clarke1
  • Archie Rayner3
  • Xinyi Chen3
  • Ruohan Wang4
  • Emmanuel Raju5
  • Emily Theokritoff4
  • Malcolm Mistry2,6
  • Antonio Gasparrini2
  • Friederike Otto1
2 more authors
  • Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera7,8
  • Garyfallos Konstantinoudis4
8 affiliations
  1. 1Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, UK.
  2. 2Environment and Health Modelling Lab, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
  3. 3School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
  4. 4Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, London, UK.
  5. 5Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
  6. 6Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy.
  7. 7Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Universität Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
  8. 8Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, Universität Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
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Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme heat, with major implications for population health. Although previous studies have attributed heat-related mortality to climate change during individual events, the longer-term contribution of human-induced warming to urban mortality burdens across Europe remains poorly quantified. Here, we combine probabilistic climate attribution with city- and age-specific temperature-mortality relationships to estimate heat-related mortality in 854 European cities during the summers of 2000-2025 under factual and counterfactual climate conditions. We estimate 430,365 heat-related deaths over the study period, with just over half of the modelled burden attributable to human-induced warming. The proportion of estimated heat deaths attributable to human-induced climate change shows a marked rise over time, increasing from 39% in 2000 to 68% in 2025. Although summer 2003 remains the second deadliest summer in absolute terms, summers with similarly large expected mortality burdens have become more frequent in recent years. These findings show that anthropogenic climate change has already greatly increased expected heat-related mortality across European cities, underscoring the need for both rapid emissions reductions and targeted local adaptation.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{barnes2026heatrelated,
  title = {{Heat-related urban mortality attributable to human-induced climate change in Europe from 2000 to 2025}},
  author = {Clair Barnes and Pierre Masselot and Di Xi and Ben Clarke and Archie Rayner and Xinyi Chen and Ruohan Wang and Emmanuel Raju and Emily Theokritoff and Malcolm Mistry and Antonio Gasparrini and Friederike Otto and Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera and Garyfallos Konstantinoudis},
  journal = {Nature health},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  doi = {10.1038/s44220-026-00674-w},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC7619643},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Heat-related urban mortality attributable to human-induced climate change in Europe from 2000 to 2025
AU  - Clair Barnes
AU  - Pierre Masselot
AU  - Di Xi
AU  - Ben Clarke
AU  - Archie Rayner
AU  - Xinyi Chen
AU  - Ruohan Wang
AU  - Emmanuel Raju
AU  - Emily Theokritoff
AU  - Malcolm Mistry
AU  - Antonio Gasparrini
AU  - Friederike Otto
AU  - Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera
AU  - Garyfallos Konstantinoudis
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/01
JO  - Nature health
DO  - 10.1038/s44220-026-00674-w
UR  - https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC7619643
AB  - Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme heat, with major implications for population health. Although previous studies have attributed heat-related mortality to climate change during individual events, the longer-term contribution of human-induced warming to urban mortality burdens across Europe remains poorly quantified. Here, we combine probabilistic climate attribution with city- and age-specific temperature-mortality relationships to estimate heat-related mortality in 854 European cities during the summers of 2000-2025 under factual and counterfactual climate conditions. We estimate 430,365 heat-related deaths over the study period, with just over half of the modelled burden attributable to human-induced warming. The proportion of estimated heat deaths attributable to human-induced climate change shows a marked rise over time, increasing from 39% in 2000 to 68% in 2025. Although summer 2003 remains the second deadliest summer in absolute terms, summers with similarly large expected mortality burdens have become more frequent in recent years. These findings show that anthropogenic climate change has already greatly increased expected heat-related mortality across European cities, underscoring the need for both rapid emissions reductions and targeted local adaptation.
SN  - 3005-0693
ER  -