Weather

Report: Europe Heatwaves Have Killed Over 35K in Record Summer

Is this a climate crisis demanding urgent action or a complex natural phenomenon misread as settled science?

Published AUG 25

Report: Europe Heatwaves Have Killed Over 35K in Record Summer

Story

Above: A woman walks with a fan during a heatwave in Nantes, western France, on June 23. Image credit: Sebastien Salom-Gomis/AFP/Getty Images

The Facts

Provisional figures from fewer than half of European countries, reported by The Guardian on Tuesday, indicate at least 35,000 excess deaths occurred during four consecutive record-breaking heatwaves this summer. Germany, Spain and France alone accounted for more than 25,000 of those deaths.
guardian
Agenzia ANSA
Anadolu Agency
Germany recorded the highest death toll, with an estimated 14,000 heat-related deaths between April 6 and Aug. 9, including roughly 9,600 in the single week of June 22-28 — the worst such figure since records began, according to the Robert Koch Institute.
Irish Examiner
Daily Mail
Spain's Carlos III Health Institute attributed 4,947 deaths to heat between May and this week, making 2026 the country's deadliest year on record for heat-related fatalities, surpassing the 4,520 recorded in 2022.
guardian
Irishtimes
Gazeta Express
France reported 7,300 excess deaths from all causes between late May and July 22, based on electronic death certificates that capture only 80% of total mortality. Italy's epidemiologists estimated a final heat-attributable toll of between 5,000 and 8,000 deaths.
Irish Examiner
New Scientist
The Times of India
The U.K.'s health security agency estimated 2,877 heat-associated deaths in England from the May and June heatwaves, while Belgium recorded a 39% rise in mortality between June 18 and 29, equating to 1,222 additional deaths, and the Netherlands reported at least 900 excess deaths.
Daily Mail
Irishtimes
The World Health Organization reported in May that heat-related mortality in Europe rose more than 30% over the past 20 years. Global temperatures are currently roughly 1.25°C above pre-industrial levels.
Irish Examiner
Al Jazeera
WHO

Sources Split

LEFT

CENTER

RIGHT

ESTAB
CRIT

CENTER

PRO
ESTAB

The Spin

Climate-skeptic narrative

Blaming deadly heatwaves entirely on human emissions ignores major gaps in climate science — cloud cover, solar variability and natural cycles remain poorly understood and inadequately modeled. Global temperatures are actually cooler than Earth's long-term biological average, and the oceans regulate heat far more powerfully than atmospheric CO₂. Rushing to crisis conclusions without resolving these fundamental unknowns is bad science, not settled fact.

Peter Clack on X

Chris Martz on X

Steve Milloy on X

Climate-concerned narrative

Europe's summer heatwaves killed over 30,000 people, and that toll keeps rising as climate-fueled heat intensifies across the continent. Europe is warming at twice the global average rate, and the WHO estimates extreme heat claims 175,000 lives annually across the broader European region. Treating deadly heatwaves as a bad faith non-story while refusing to divest from fossil fuels or expand access to cooling is a policy failure with a body count.