Europe's new heat map reveals deadly risks for vulnerable groups

Scientists have created an interactive map of Europe that illustrates the level of threat to life due to extreme heat. Not everyone is equally exposed.

Four people died this week in Italy due to extreme heat, with temperatures reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Rome. Last month, extremely hot weather killed six tourists in Greece, and experts predict another record hot year due to climate change. However, it may be difficult to assess how dangerous heat waves are.

A new tool attempts to fill this gap by forecasting the likelihood of death during heat waves in different European locations based on age and gender data. Launched on July 16, the forecaster.health website is the first pan-European, publicly accessible platform to predict the mortality risk associated with temperatures for various demographic groups.

According to scientists from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), approximately 70,000 people died from heat-related causes in Europe in the summer of 2022. The same team used past mortality data and weather forecasts to create a first-of-its-kind tool to save lives.

Joan Ballester Claramunt, a scientist at ISGlobal, noted:

"Until now, temperature warnings have been solely based on the physical information of weather forecasts, and therefore, they ignore the differences in vulnerability to heat and cold among population groups. Our system changes this paradigm by shifting the focus from meteorology to epidemiology and the social determinants of vulnerability to the environmental factors."

The system developed by the scientists in Barcelona shifts the focus from meteorology to epidemiology, which studies diseases and other public health issues.

Many factors, including gender and age, influence our vulnerability to the adverse effects of heat. Marcos Quijal-Zamorano, a researcher at ISGlobal and one of the authors of the system, explained:

"We know that vulnerability to heat is influenced by a number of factors, including sex and age. We know, for example, that women are more susceptible to heat than men, and that the risk of death for both heat and cold increases with age. For that reason, our tool separately fits epidemiological models for each sex and age group, which allows us to issue independent warnings accounting for the real impacts on the population."

Ballester, in turn, told Euronews Green:

"I'm not 100 per cent sure that all old women are aware that they have more risk than men. And maybe if they knew it, they might change things."

The scientist explained that many factors contribute to this phenomenon. Socioeconomics, for instance, provides some answers. Women generally have lower salaries and thus have fewer resources, such as air conditioning, to protect themselves. They are also more often widowed and, therefore, more likely to live alone and be isolated from help.