The climate crisis has tripled heat deaths in Europe this summer.

BarcelonaThe climate emergency has tripled deaths due to the heat of this summer in Europe: Without this phenomenon caused by the burning of fossil fuels, 68% of the deaths caused by extreme heat this summer on the Old Continent would not have occurred. This is the conclusion of a study led by scientists from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, which estimates that at least 24,400 people died between June and August 2025 in 850 European cities due to high temperatures. The study also estimates that if there were no climate change, 16,500 of these deaths would not have occurred and the number of heat-related deaths would have been 7,900.

The vast majority of these heat-related deaths, 85%, were people aged 65 or over, which once again confirms that as the planet's temperature continues to rise, "summers will become increasingly deadly for Europe's aging population." "While policies are needed to protect people from the heat, the most effective way to avoid hotter, deadlier summers is to rapidly phase out fossil fuels," the study's authors note.

A total of 3,993 deaths were recorded in Spain due to high temperatures, of which 2,841 are attributable to the climate crisis, according to this study. According to the analysis, Barcelona was the third European city with more additional deaths caused by the climate crisis, with 630 attributable deaths (80% of the total), the same figure as Athens and only surpassed by Rome (835 deaths) and Milan (1,156 deaths). The study even cites as an example the The case of the Barcelona municipal cleaning worker who died of heat stroke at the end of June.

"The causal chain from the burning of fossil fuels to increased heat and mortality is undeniable. If we had not continued burning fossil fuels over the past few decades, most of the estimated 16,500 people who would have died in Europe this summer will not have died," says Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and one of the authors of the study, which calculates that the average temperature this summer in European cities has risen by about 2.2 ° C.

The planet's global temperature is already estimated to have risen by 1.3 ° C since the pre-industrial era. "But this century we are on track to experience up to 3 ° C, which would bring more intense and much deadlier summer heat to Europe," warns Otto.

However, the summer of 2025 was not the hottest in recent years, nor the deadliest. In fact, it was the fourth summer The hottest year on the continent since records began. In the summer of 2022, 60,000 people died from intense heat waves across Europe, and a study at the time attributed 56% of these deaths to the climate emergency. 2023 wasn't as hot, but 47,000 people still died from the heat.