Reacción a "The summer of 2026 resulted in more than 50,000 heat-related deaths in Europe, two-thirds of which were attributable to climate change"

The study is highly significant because it presents estimates of heat-attributable mortality in numerous European cities using a common methodological framework. This is a valuable contribution, as it enables results to be compared across regions and allows patterns and differences to be identified on a continental scale, thereby contributing to our understanding of the health impacts of heat and its link to climate change.

However, it is important to bear in mind that these are estimates based on observed temperatures and epidemiological models, which do not incorporate actual data on deaths that occurred in the summer of 2026. Furthermore, the methodology bases the attribution to heat on the temperature associated with minimum mortality, which may result in high estimates. In public health, temperature thresholds associated with significant increases in risk are typically used to estimate the impact; these allow us to identify when heat begins to have a significant impact on mortality. The results are therefore valuable for assessing the potential impact of heat and climate change in Europe, but they should be interpreted with the methodological approach in mind and distinguished from observed mortality data and the estimates provided by official sources for Spain.