A lot of heat deaths are not obvious, people might die days later because of circulatory problems or many other symptoms (I remember that heat can cause kidney failure, for example).
These deaths can only later be identified as excess deaths from mortality statistics. Germany had a “small” heat wave in summer 2020, and it killed more people than Corona in this summer (not to be confounded with the following years).
BTW it is a question of time not if, but when the electric grid in an Eastern European or Mediterranean country fails and this can cause far more deaths - I speak of hundreds of thousands - if it hits people depending on air conditioning. A big power failure in Italy or Greece and people would be fried alive.
This is also why we need solar power, it is far better matched to that peak demand. (Plus it kills fossil electricity by undercutting it in cost, which is a nice-to-have since we are at war with fossil power now - either we kill it, or it will kill us).
The 2003 European heatwave has been estimated to have killed more than 70,000 people.
A lot of heat deaths are not obvious, people might die days later because of circulatory problems or many other symptoms (I remember that heat can cause kidney failure, for example).
These deaths can only later be identified as excess deaths from mortality statistics. Germany had a “small” heat wave in summer 2020, and it killed more people than Corona in this summer (not to be confounded with the following years).
The heat stress also makes CVD worse, for similar reasons.
We’ll probably learn about it from the Excess Death stats, but that also needs to be disentangled from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
A physiological approach for assessing human survivability and liveability to heat in a changing climate https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43121-5
BTW it is a question of time not if, but when the electric grid in an Eastern European or Mediterranean country fails and this can cause far more deaths - I speak of hundreds of thousands - if it hits people depending on air conditioning. A big power failure in Italy or Greece and people would be fried alive.
This is also why we need solar power, it is far better matched to that peak demand. (Plus it kills fossil electricity by undercutting it in cost, which is a nice-to-have since we are at war with fossil power now - either we kill it, or it will kill us).