Future heat-related mortality in Europe driven by compound day-night heatwaves and demographic shifts.

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is driving summer heat toward more humid conditions, accompanied by more frequent day-night compound heat extremes (high temperatures during both day and night). As the fast-warming and aging continent, Europe faces escalating heat-related health risks. Here, we projected future heat-related mortality in Europe using a distributed lag nonlinear model that incorporates humid heat and compound heat extremes, strengthened by a health risk-based definition of extreme heat and a scenario matrix integrating time-varying adaptation trajectories. Under 2010-2019 adaptation baselines, future heat-related mortality is projected to increase annually by 103.7-135.1 deaths per million people by 2100 across various population-climate scenarios for every degree of global warming, with Western and Eastern Europe suffering the most. If global warming exceeds 2 °C, climate change will dominate (84.0-96.8%) projected increase in heat-related mortality. Across all socioeconomic pathways, even a 50% reduction in heat-related relative risk through physiological adaptation will be insufficient to offset the climate change-driven escalation of future heat-related mortality.