Record-breaking heat in the summer of 2022 caused more than 61,000 deaths in Europe, study finds

The summer of 2022 was the hottest summer ever recorded in Europe and was characterized by an intense series of record-breaking heat waves, droughts and forest fires. While Eurostat, the European statistical office, already reported unusually high excess mortality for those dates, until now the fraction of mortality attributable to heat had not been quantified.