Overview

• The Barcelona Institute for Global Health’s Nature Medicine study estimates 62,775 heat-attributable deaths across about 30 European countries in summer 2024.
• The plausible toll ranges from roughly 35,000 to 85,000 deaths, underscoring uncertainty in modeling the relationship between temperature and mortality.
• Italy recorded the highest absolute toll with an estimated 13,858–23,506 deaths, followed by Spain with 4,655–8,513, while Greece and Bulgaria faced the heaviest per-capita burdens.
• Revised methods place 2024 between updated estimates for 2022 (67,873) and 2023 (50,798), reinforcing that extreme heat repeatedly drives large seasonal death counts.
• A separate British-affiliated analysis of about 1,000 cities put provisional 2025 heat deaths above 15,000, a narrower assessment that is not directly comparable to the annual benchmark.