Hundreds of Deaths in 2003 Heat Wave Linked to Climate Change

A new study suggests that human-caused climate change could be responsible for a significant portion of the 70,000 deaths that occurred during the record-breaking 2003 European heat wave. The research, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, combined climate modeling with health data for hundreds of fatalities that summer. Climate change, the study found, increased the likelihood of heat-related losses by nearly 70 percent in Paris and 20 percent in London. Out of 735 heat-related deaths in Paris, 506 were attributable to global warming, as were 64 out of 315 deaths in London. “Until recently, whenever we talked about climate change we talked about the globally averaged increase in temperature of 1 degree and people just don’t really know or frankly care about that,” lead study author and Oxford University scientist Daniel Mitchell told InsideClimate News. “But now”¦ people can really start to understand that these are impacts we’re seeing now, not in the future.”