For several years now, climate skeptics have been spreading the idea that the increase in deaths caused by high temperatures linked to global warming will be offset by a reduction, in the future, in deaths linked to winter cold. A study published on Monday, January 27 in the journal Nature refutes this. While there are currently 10 cold-related deaths for every heat-related death in Europe, this balance is likely to be reversed by the end of the 21st century.
In 854 cities representing 40% of the European population, the researchers studied the difference between deaths due to winter ailments (cold, disease, etc.) and those due to summer heat, according to the different scenarios of global warming, adaptation efforts and demographic changes established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the coming years.
The researchers estimate that, even under the most optimistic scenario of an average warming of 1.7°C by 2060, heat-related deaths will outnumber cold-related deaths, with an increase of 7.6 temperature-related deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In the worst-case scenario, if no effort is made to adapt to rising temperatures in Europe by the end of the century, the researchers estimate the total number of deaths due to global temperature rise to be 2.3 million people in Europe. Mitigating the risk by 50% – notably through air conditioning, revegetation and reduced air pollution – would not be enough to reverse this trend, but would reduce the number of temperature-related deaths to 268,100 people.
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