Heatwaves have climate change connection - scientists

Hundreds of people in Paris and London who died in a record-setting European heat wave in 2003 perished because of human-caused climate change, first-of-its-kind research has found.

A study published yesterday in Environmental Research Letters found about 68 percent of the 735 deaths in Paris that scorching summer are attributable to human activity, as well as 20 percent of the 315 deaths in greater London. Across Europe, nearly 70,000 people died, and scientists said at least some of those deaths could be attributable to climate change, as well.

"We are already feeling very real impacts of Paris ," said Daniel Mitchell, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford and the lead author of the study. "We are now capable of making these estimates, albeit with large uncertainties."

This is the first study to directly attribute deaths during a particular extreme weather event to climate change. The study limits itself to Paris and London, but extending its framework to other cities that suffered in 2003 would increase the deaths due to climate change.

Read the E&E News story - “Scientists link heat wave deaths directly to climate change.”

(Victoria’s much publicised 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires killed nearly 200 people and injured more than 400, but what is rarely mentioned that the heat of the week leading up to the catastrophic fires killed far more people, in excess of 300 – Robert McLean.)