London: A study now links two in every three heat deaths this summer in Europe to human-made global heating, The Guardian reported.
The shocking revelation comes from what the report said an ‘early analysis of mortality in 854 big cities’.
As many as 16,500 out of 24,400 heat deaths reported from June to August came, according to epidemiologists and climate scientists, from the ‘extra hot weather’ stemming from greenhouse gases.
The climate breakdown, according to the analysis, made the cities 2.2C hotter on average contributing greatly to death toll from warm weather.
Friederike Otto, the report’s co-author and a climate scientist at Imperial College London said, ‘If we had not continued to burn fossil fuels over the last decades, most of the estimated 24,400 people in Europe wouldn’t have died this summer’.
The scientists found that the extra heat was the cause of about 68% of the estimated deaths with older people particularly being affected by the ‘punishing temperatures’.
It is found that 85 per cent of those died from heat were over the age 65 while 41% over the age of 85.
Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, another co-author of the study and epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said ‘The vast majority of heat deaths happen in homes and hospitals, where people with existing health conditions are pushed to their limits’.
Pointing to a lapse in responding to the situation, Garyfallos Konstantinoudis said that ‘But heat is rarely mentioned on death certificates’.