High temperatures in Europe made worse by carbon emissions caused nearly 50,000 deaths in Europe last year, a study has found.

2023 was the warmest year on record globally, and the second-warmest in Europe, leading to heatwaves, wild fires and droughts.

Indeed, data from the EU’s climate monitoring service shows that June 2024 was the hottest June on record, marking a 13-month streak of unprecedented global heat.

To discover the effect these rising temperatures had on European mortality rates, a team at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) carried out a study.

Using temperature and mortality records from 823 contiguous regions in 35 European countries from 2015 to 2019, the researchers were able to estimate heat related mortality in each European region over the entire year of 2023.

The findings show that while hot weather inflamed by carbon pollution claimed the lives of 47,690 across the 35 countries as a whole, this amount would have been 80% higher if action had not...