by Washington (AP)-the climate change caused by humans is responsible for killing around 1500 people in last week’s European heat wave, a first of its kind of fast research.
Those 1500 people “only died because of climate change, so they would not have died if it had not been for our burning of oil, coal and gas in the last century,” said Co-author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College in London.
Scientists from Imperial and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used Peer-Reviewed Techniques to calculate that around 2,300 people in 12 cities probably died of the heat in the attack of last week’s attack, with almost two-thirds of those who die to the Natural degrees that climate change.
Previous fast attribution studies have not gone further than evaluating the role of climate change in meteorological effects such as extra heat, floods or drought. This study goes one step further when connecting coal, oil and natural gas use with people who die.
“Heat waves are silent murderers and their health effect is very difficult to measure,” said co-author Gary Konstantinoudis, a biostatistician at Imperial College. “People do not understand the real mortality of heat waves and this is because (doctors, hospitals, hospitals, hospitals, hospitals) do not attribute a heat as an underlying cause of death” and attribute the death of death “and instead attribute the death of death” and instead attributing the death of death “and the death of death.
Of the 1500 deaths attributed to climate change, the study showed that more than 1,100 people aged 75 or older were.
Climate change made a heat wave heter
“It’s summer, so it’s sometimes hot,” said the study -head author Ben Clarke of Imperial College in a news conference on Tuesday. “The influence of climate change has staged it in different degrees and what that does is that it brings certain groups of people more to dangerous territory and that is what is important. That is what we really want to emphasize here. For some people it is still warm weather, but for now it is a huge sector of the population.”
Researchers looked at June 23 to July 2 in London; Paris; Frankfurt, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Zagreb, Croatia; Athens, Greece; Barcelona, Spain; Madrid; Lisbon, Portugal; Rome; Milan and Sassari, Italy. They discovered that, apart from Lisbon, the extra warmth of greenhouse gases 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) added to what would have been a more natural heat wave. London got the most at almost 4 degrees (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). Climate change has only added a diploma to the peak temperature of Lisbon, the study calculated, mainly because of the moderating effect of the Atlantic, Otto said.
That extra caused heat caused by climate change in Milan, Barcelona and Paris and the least in Sassari, Frankfort and Lisbon, according to the study. The 1500 digit is the middle of the reach of the total estimates of the climate -related death that go from approximately 1,250 to around 1,700.
How scientists weigh climate change, calculate deaths
Wednesday’s study has not yet been reviewed by Peer-Reviewed. It is an extension of the work of an international team of scientists who are doing fast attribution studies to look for the fingerprints of global warming in the growing number of extreme weather conditions worldwide, and that combine with long -established epidemiological research that investigates the death trends that differ from what is normally considered.
Researchers compared what the thermometers read last week with what computer simulations say that would have happened in a world without planet -warming greenhouse gases through the use of fossil fuels. Health researchers then compared estimates – there are no solid figures yet – for heat deaths in what has just happened with which heat deaths would be expected for each city without those extra degrees of heat.
There are long established formulas that calculate surplus deaths that differ from normal based on location, demography, temperatures and other factors and that are used, said Otto and Konstantinoudis. And health researchers take into account many variables such as smoking and chronic diseases, so it compares similar people except temperature, so they know that is the fault, said Konstantinoudis.
Studies in 2021 generally linked excess heat to deaths to climate change and carbon emissions caused by humans, but no specific events such as last week’s hot spell. A 2023 study in natural medicine estimated that since 2015, for every degree Celsius, the temperature in Europe has risen, there has been an extra 18,547 summer heat deaths.
Studies such as Wednesday have “ended gambling game about the health shades due to further burning of fossil fuels,” said Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Center for Health, Energy and Environmental Research at the University of Wisconsin. He was not part of the research, but said it “combined the most up-to-date climate and health methods and discovered that every group of a degree of warming up things related to extreme heat waves.”
Dr. Courtney Howard, a doctor in Canadian First Aid and chairman of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, said: “Studies like these help us see that reducing the use of fossil fuels is healthcare.”
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