Increasingly hot European summers are harming health

Heat stress in Europe is increasingly threatening people's health as global warming makes summers there hotter and deadlier, two leading climate monitors warned on Monday.

2023 saw record levels of heat stress in Europe, environmental conditions under which the human body struggles to cope, said the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the UN's World Meteorological Organization in a report.

Extreme heat is already the leading cause of climate-related death in Europe, and 23 of the 30 worst-recorded heat waves on the continent have occurred this century. The data on deaths in Europe from extreme heat in 2023 is not available yet.