From 1991 to 2018, more than one third of all deaths associated with heat occurred due to the increase in global air temperature. According to the model developed by scientists from the United States, Great Britain and Switzerland, in the world without an anthropogenic climate change would die much less people. This is reported in an article published in the Nature Climate Change magazine.
Specialists analyzed the mortality data from 43 countries who lived in 732 settlements. The researchers first calculated the total number of deaths on the state of health and associated the oscillation of this parameter with the values of the average temperature during the warm season (the four warmest months walking together). In total, about 30 million deaths occurred from 1991 to 2015 entered the analysis. Countries widely differed in climate: the average temperature of the hottest season varied from 15 to more than 25 degrees Celsius.
In the second stage of research, scientists calculated the burden of mortality due to heat for two scenarios. The first is characterized by a real climate situation in the world, and the second was based on the climate model without the influence of a person.
In all countries where studies have been conducted, 20.5-76.3 percent of all deaths (on average, 37 percent), the reason for which heat began in the warm season, can be attributed to global warming. In some regions, such as Southern Europe, Central and South America and Southeast Asia, the risk of death from heat is especially high, and mortality reaches several hundred cases per year. In Ecuador and Colombia, up to three quarters of all deaths associated with heat occurred due to global warming as a result of anthropogenic emissions.
The authors of the article emphasize that a noticeable increase in the number of deaths occurred only due to the increase in the average temperature of approximately one degree Celsius above the pre-industrial, which is below the limits set by the Paris Agreement (1.5-2 degrees Celsius).