Heat was linked to an estimated 733 excess deaths in the Greek urban areas covered by a new European analysis of the summer of 2026, with human-caused warming accounting for much of that burden.
The researchers estimated that 543 of those deaths were attributable to the additional heat caused by climate change. Their Greek sample represented about 3.9 million residents. The figures are statistical estimates for the areas studied, not a registered death toll for all of Greece.
The report, issued Oct. 23, was published by researchers at Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and other institutions. It examined June through August across 854 European cities in 30 countries.
Greece’s heat burden in a wider European picture
The Greek estimate came with a substantial uncertainty range: 517 to 938 heat-related excess deaths. For deaths attributed to human-caused warming, the corresponding range was 376 to 705. Both are 95% empirical confidence intervals, reflecting uncertainty in the models.
Across all the European cities studied, the team estimated 50,391 heat-related excess deaths, including 32,619 attributable to warming caused by human activity—about 65% of the total. The greatest burden fell on older adults. People age 85 and over accounted for an estimated 22,502 deaths across the European sample, while the estimate for people ages 20 to 44 was 833.
How the researchers measured the effect of warming
The analysis combined temperature data, population estimates and earlier research linking heat exposure with mortality. It compared the summer’s conditions with a modeled climate in which human-caused warming had not occurred. That approach estimates the additional mortality associated with warming across a population.
Its authors also identify limits to the calculation. The relationships between temperature and mortality draw on data from 2000 to 2019, so they cannot fully capture later changes in health care, adaptation or vulnerability.
The urban areas studied contained almost 173 million people, roughly 40% of the population of the 30 countries.
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