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Guest post: France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths

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Article by Dr. Christopher Callahan and Prof. Andrew Dessler republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license. 

First responders tending to person with heatstroke in Paris on 21 June, 2026. Credit: Icon Sport / Alamy Stock Photo.

In June 2026, a record-breaking heatwave swept across Europe, with France among the first and hardest hit countries. 

In a new analysis, we estimate that the extreme conditions caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths in France.

We also show how France’s extreme temperatures in June exceeded projections from climate models.

Our findings illustrate the human toll of extreme weather as the world warms.

We also highlight the challenges in projecting the magnitude of future heatwaves and their impacts on people.

Outpacing projections

For most of this century, Europe has seen summer heat extremes that outpace projections from climate models. 

Several different factors likely explain this trend, including reductions in planet-cooling aerosols as nations have cleaned up their air pollution, as well as changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, which models struggle to represent.   

In June 2026, daily high temperatures averaged across France reached 36.9C, shattering the previous June record set in 2022 by 2.4C.

[For more on the impacts and coverage of Europe’s June heatwave, see Carbon Brief’s explainer.]

The rise in observed temperatures in France has outpaced projections made by climate models, with June maximum temperatures more in line with what was expected for the 2070s.

This is illustrated in the figure below, which shows how France’s average maximum daily high temperature for June recorded in 2026 (black line) compares to climate model projections (blue and orange lines).

Comparison of observed (ERA5, black) and modelled (blue and orange) temperatures across France from 2000 to 2080. Plot shows the maximum daily high temperature recorded in June for each year, after averaging temperatures across France. The model ensembles are bias-corrected CMIP6 model ensembles from the NEX-GDDP (blue) and CIL-GDPCIR (orange) projects. The dashed blue and orange lines are the ensemble averages. Credit: Prof Andrew Dessler.
Comparison of observed (ERA5, black) and modelled (blue and orange) temperatures across France from 2000 to 2080. Plot shows the maximum daily high temperature recorded in June for each year, after averaging temperatures across France. The model ensembles are bias-corrected CMIP6 model ensembles from the NEX-GDDP (blue) and CIL-GDPCIR (orange) projects. The dashed blue and orange lines are the ensemble averages. Credit: Prof Andrew Dessler.

Counting the death toll of climate change

The downstream impacts of these extreme temperatures are lethal. 

Scientists are able to estimate the death toll of high temperatures in many locations, depending on the availability of mortality and climate data. 

There are several ways to do this. 

One option is to examine death certificates to see which deaths have been directly recorded by physicians as related to heat. However, there is strong evidence that this method significantly undercounts heat-related deaths, as most death certificates do not consider environmental factors such as heat when diagnosing the cause of death.

Alternatively, it is possible to calculate the rate of total (“all-cause”) mortality in a given time period relative to previous time periods – for example, by comparing the total number of deaths in June 2026 compared to the average of previous Junes. This “excess deaths” figure can be used as an estimate of the deaths from a heat wave. 

Using this approach, Public Health France attributed around 2,000 deaths in France to the extreme heat in the week of 22-28 June.

Finally, scientists can use long-term data on overall mortality and correlate changes in mortality with changes in temperature to understand the statistical relationship between the two. 

Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025 that used this third approach found that mortality rates in France increase rapidly in cold or hot conditions as daily maximum temperatures depart further from approximately 20C.

This pattern of a U-shaped response of mortality to temperature – shown in the figure below – is very consistent across time periods and regions around the world. 

Chart showing the relationship between extreme heat and mortality in France
Relationship between daily high temperature and all-cause mortality rates in France, estimated using data over 2004-19. Credit: Dr Christopher Callahan, based on data and methods in Callahan et al. (2025)

To calculate the death toll of the June 2026 heatwave in France, we compared observed temperatures over 12-29 June to their baseline average over 1980-2025. 

The difference between these two temperatures helps us understand how many more people died than they would have in the absence of such extreme conditions.

Over 12-29 June, we found that France has experienced around 2,700 heat-related deaths above the average baseline. Day-to-day heat-related mortality rates rose from less than 100 to almost 300 on the hottest days of 24 and 25 June.

This is shown in the graph below, which illustrates the cumulative total heat-related deaths seen in France over the two-and-a-half week period. The inset shows how heat-related deaths fluctuated on a day-to-day basis during this time.

Chart showing the number of deaths from heat in France during the June 2026 heatwave
Estimated heat-related mortality over 12-29 June, based on a U-shaped response of mortality to temperature. The main plot shows cumulative total deaths and the inset shows daily deaths. Credit: Dr Christopher Callahan, based on data and methods in Callahan et al. (2025)

Recent analysis by World Weather Attribution has already shown that human-caused climate change increased the frequency and intensity of the June heat wave across Europe.

Meanwhile, previous research has shown there is substantial evidence that heat-related mortality in Europe has already been elevated by greenhouse gas emissions. 

As a result, we can be confident that at least some of the more than 2,700 deaths already seen in France are directly due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Calculating climate risk

In April, the UN-led body responsible for coordinating the work of climate modelling centres – the Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Project (CMIP) – unveiled a set of seven new emissions scenarios.

These are designed to replace the previous scenarios that have been used by scientists to understand how the climate might change in the future. They will feed into the upcoming seventh assessment report (AR7) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The range of future emissions in the new CMIP scenarios is smaller, with scenarios of very high or very low emissions no longer on the table.

The retirement of the very-high emissions scenario – known as “RCP8.5” – led to certain commentators in the media and in politics, including US president Donald Trump, arguing that the risks of climate change had been “overstated”.

[For more on false and misleading claims around the new emissions scenarios, see Carbon Brief’s factcheck.]

Our analysis of June’s heat-related deaths in France suggests that, even if the most severe emissions pathways are no longer needed, climate impacts are taking a heavy toll on society. 

Moreover, the temperatures seen in France show that climate models continue to underpredict the magnitude of heatwaves for a particular level of global warming.

This is because greenhouse gas emissions are only a first step in estimating the impacts of climate change.

The second step is converting emissions to changes in the climate at both the global and local levels – or hazards. This includes heatwaves, flash floods and droughts.  

The third step is to determine how changes in the hazards will affect local populations. This can be determined by calculating people’s exposure and vulnerability to hazards.

Substantial uncertainty persists at every stage of this sequence. 

For example, scientists do not know exactly how the global climate will react to ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions – nor the extent to which global temperature increases will drive local climate hazards. We also do not know how climate change at a local level impacts human health outcomes.

Managing the future of heat risk

Almost all heat-related deaths are preventable. 

Adaptation options, such as air conditioning, heat action plans and social support for isolated people, will be crucial as the climate moves away from the typical conditions that people are used to.

Our previous research showed that France made a lot of progress reducing heat-related mortality after the deadly 2003 summer heatwave by taking many of these actions. 

Adaptation can reduce deaths, but it cannot eliminate the risk created by continued warming. 

Without a move away from fossil fuels, future heatwaves will keep testing the limits of public health systems and more people will die.

Article by Dr. Christopher Callahan and Prof. Andrew Dessler republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license. 

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.

Continue ReadingGuest post: France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths

‘We Are Being Cooked Alive’: Wildfires Driven by Climate Crisis Ravage Europe

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A firefighter works to extinguish a wildfire in the village of Vilaza in northwestern Spain on August 12, 2025.  (Photo: Miguel Riopa/AFP via Getty Images)

Fire-related deaths were reported in Turkey, Spain, Montenegro, and Albania.

With firefighters in southern Europe battling blazes that have killed people in multiple countries and forced thousands to evacuate, Spain’s environment minister on Wednesday called the wildfires a “clear warning” of the climate emergency driven by the fossil fuel industry.

While authorities have cited a variety of causes for current fires across the continent, from arson to “careless farming practices, improperly maintained power cables, and summer lightning storms,” scientists have long stressed that wildfires are getting worse as humanity heats the planet with fossil fuels.

The Spanish minister, Sara Aagesen, told the radio network Cadena SER that “the fires are one of the parts of the impact of that climate change, which is why we have to do all we can when it comes to prevention.”

“Our country is especially vulnerable to climate change. We have resources now but, given that the scientific evidence and the general expectation point to it having an ever greater impact, we need to work to reinforce and professionalize those resources,” Aagesen added in remarks translated by The Guardian.

The Spanish meteorological agency, AEMET, said on social media Wednesday that “the danger of wildfires continues at very high or extreme levels in most of Spain, despite the likelihood of showers in many areas,” and urged residents to “take extreme precautions!”

The heatwave impacting Spain “peaked on Tuesday with temperatures as high as 45°C (113°F),” according to Reuters. AEMET warned that “starting Thursday, the heat will intensify again,” and is likely to continue through Monday.

The heatwave is also a sign of climate change, Akshay Deoras, a research scientist in the Meteorology Department at the U.K.’s University of Reading, told Agence France-Presse this week.

“Thanks to climate change, we now live in a significantly warmer world,” Deoras said, adding that “many still underestimate the danger.”

There have been at least two fire-related deaths in Spain this week: a man working at a horse stable on the outskirts of the Spanish capital Madrid, and a 35-year-old volunteer firefighter trying to make firebreaks near the town of Nogarejas, in the Castile and León region.

Acknowledging the firefighter’s death on social media Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez sent his “deepest condolences to their family, friends, and colleagues,” and wished “much strength and a speedy recovery to the people injured in that same fire.”

According to The New York Times, deaths tied to the fires were also reported in Turkey, Montenegro, and Albania. Additionally, The Guardian noted, “a 4-year-old boy who was found unconscious in his family’s car in Sardinia died in Rome on Monday after suffering irreversible brain damage caused by heatstroke.”

There are also fires in Greece, France, and Portugal, where the mayor of Vila Real, Alexandre Favaios, declared that “we are being cooked alive, this cannot continue.”

Reuters on Wednesday highlighted Greenpeace estimates that investing €1 billion, or $1.17 billion, annually in forest management could save 9.9 million hectares or 24.5 million acres—an area bigger than Portugal—and tens of billions of euros spent on firefighting and restoration work.

The European fires are raging roughly three months out from the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, which is scheduled to begin on November 10 in Belém, Brazil.

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Continue Reading‘We Are Being Cooked Alive’: Wildfires Driven by Climate Crisis Ravage Europe

COP29 puts world on course for more extreme weather – and more deaths

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Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

After a disappointing COP29, we should prepare for more extreme weather events like the floods that hit Valencia last month
 | David Ramos/Getty Images

Summit proves change won’t come until floods and wildfires are killing tens of thousands in rich Global North cities

While COP29 in Baku narrowly avoided collapsing, its results were bitterly disappointing for delegations from across the Global South, who ended up with barely a quarter of the annual $1.3trn of support they were seeking by 2035 to respond to climate breakdown.

Quite apart from other factors, more than 1,500 pro-carbon lobbyists worked hard to limit progress and ensure that burning oil, gas and coal at profit continues for as long as possible whatever the global consequences. After all, the world’s fossil fuel industries rake in around a trillion dollars in profits a year.

Meanwhile, more and more examples are emerging of accelerating climate breakdown. The flooding in Valencia is just one, but scarcely noticed in Europe is the thoroughly weird weather being experienced in the eastern United States.

This autumn there have been over five hundred wildfires in New Jersey alone, a 5,000-acre fire has been burning for a week on the New York-New Jersey border prompting a voluntary evacuation, and New York City’s Fire Department was called out to deal with 271 brush fires in the first two weeks of November alone.

As if timed for that and certainly released with COP29 in mind, Carbon Brief, a website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy, has mapped every published study on ‘impossible’ weather events – record heatwaves or storms that would not have happened without the overall global climate changes.

The first such study came in 2004, the year after weeks of extreme heat hit Europe and killed 70,000 people across the continent over several months. That early example of an ‘impossible’ weather event kick-started a new field of research known as ‘extreme event attribution’, which looks at how climate change has influenced extreme weather.

There are now 600 studies of 750 such extreme events spanning the past 20 years – a tiny fraction of the total number of these kinds of events. Of these 750, Carbon Brief found that scientists and researchers had concluded that 74% were made more likely or more severe because of climate change.

This has added to the growing sense of urgency right across the climate science community coupled with a highly critical view of the whole COP process. Even before the dismaying summit in the Azerbaijani capital, both last year’s COP in Abu Dhabi and the year before in Egypt were notable for their lack of progress even as the urgency of preventing climate breakdown was becoming more and more obvious.

There are other risks to global security including nuclear weapons, pandemics, cyber warfare, AI misuse and the progressive destruction of biodiversity, but climate breakdown is different from all of these. It is not a future risk, it is a current happening, it is accelerating, and we now have very few years left to get on top of it. If we don’t then a worldwide catastrophe with many hundreds of millions dying and societal collapse will become increasingly likely.

Does it have to be like that?

As things stand, in terms of changing attitudes, developments in renewables, resistance of the fossil carbon industries and, of course, Donald Trump’s looming presidency in the US, a reasonable prognosis for the next decade has three elements.

First, the use of renewable energy resources does continue to increase but not at anything like the rate required, so net carbon emissions will continue to rise, not fall, for most of the next ten years. Second, resistance to decarbonisation will continue from many quarters, no doubt now including the White House. Finally, severe weather events will become both more common and more destructive.

Eventually, and it might take more than a decade, the disasters will be so great, including sudden weather events in rich cities in the Global North killing many tens of thousands of people, that public pressure across the world will force governments to respond. There will be no alternative to engage in truly transformative change.

But what that means is that the task ahead by then will be hugely greater than if the transformation starts much sooner, so timescales become crucial, especially what can speed up the process.

There is, though, one thing to remember at a time of widespread pessimism. If nations had got their act together 25 years ago after the Kyoto Protocols, were signed we would be in a far more favourable position worldwide than we are now. We are acting more than two decades late.

But climate breakdown is not happening as a slow, steady process of change, creeping up almost unawares. If that had been the case then with all the reasons not to act, especially the global fossil carbon lobby, we would have been in an even worse position now. Instead, it is happening at variable rates in two respects, some parts of the world – such as the polar regions – are warming up much faster than others and extreme weather events are happening much more often.

We are therefore getting a foretaste of what will affect everyone a few years before it does, and this gives us just a little more time to act. It means that the next ten years, and perhaps even the five years to 2030, will be the key time for us to come to terms with the transformation in society that is essential for global well-being. That is possible, just.

Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingCOP29 puts world on course for more extreme weather – and more deaths

Deadly heat waves in Mecca and Greece underscore climate crisis

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https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/heat-waves-greece-mecca-saudi-arabia-climate-crisis

As the U.S. faces another potentially record heat wave this week, the Middle East and Europe’s Mediterranean have endured extreme temperatures that have proven deadly.

The big picture: Multiple heat-related deaths have been reported in Greece during the country’s earliest heat wave on record and Jordan’s official news agency said Sunday “14 Jordanian pilgrims died and 17 others were missing” in the searing heat while on the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

Tourists outside the Acropolis during high temperatures in Athens, Greece, on June 12, when authorities announced the closure of the ancient site for five hours due to soaring temperatures that also shut schools. Photo: Hilary Swift/Bloomberg via Getty Images
  • The heat waves sweeping these regions this month have been made “at least five times more likely” because of human-caused climate change, per new Climate Central analysis.

Context: Climate Central’s analysis is based on the group’s Climate Shift Index (CSI), which compares observed or forecast temperatures with simulations of the same weather conditions minus excess atmospheric greenhouse gases, per Alex Fitzpatrick.

  • The idea is to compare real-world conditions with what might have been the case had human-caused climate change been absent.
  • Saudi Arabia had a CSI of 5, meaning that human-caused climate change made a given daily average temperature five times more likely as of Monday morning. Greece, which has endured two weeks of extreme heat, had a CSI of 5 last week and 2 on Monday. Parts of Turkey had a CSI of 5.

Between the lines: Greece has been among the worst-affected European countries for extreme weather caused by the climate crisis in recent months, enduring an intense heat wave, severe wildfires and heavy rains flooding the country’s streets last year.

  • A joint report by UN and European Union agencies found in April that Europe’s temperatures are rising about twice as fast the global average due to human-caused climate change — making it the fastest-warming continent on Earth.

…

Continues at https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/heat-waves-greece-mecca-saudi-arabia-climate-crisis

Continue ReadingDeadly heat waves in Mecca and Greece underscore climate crisis

Climate crisis made May heatwaves 1.5C hotter in India, study says

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Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/india-heatwaves-climate-change-delhi-50c-b2558588.html

Hundreds of deaths have been attributed to heatwave that saw temperatures approaching 50C in Delhi

The unprecedented heatwaves that scorched northern and central India in May were made 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter by the climate crisis, a new scientific assessment has found.

In the last week of May, India experienced a spell of severe heatwaves, with 37 cities recording temperatures above 45C, prompting warnings of heatstroke. The capital Delhi saw a record temperature of 49.1C.

The heatwaves led to hundreds of deaths, including one voter and several workers conducting the mammoth national election, which ended after six weeks on 1 June.

The heatwaves were nearly 1.5C warmer than the hottest heatwaves the country had seen previously despite occurring later in the typical summer season, according to a report published by ClimaMeter, a research project funded by the European Union and the French National Centre for Scientific Research, or CNRS.

The study found that the heatwaves were “a largely unique event whose characteristics can mostly be ascribed to human driven climate change”.

This May was the hottest ever on record globally, completing an entire year of record-breaking extreme heat for the planet.

…

Article continues https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/india-heatwaves-climate-change-delhi-50c-b2558588.html

Continue ReadingClimate crisis made May heatwaves 1.5C hotter in India, study says