Heat could kill 30,000 a year in England and Wales, says study

More than 30,000 people a year could die in England and Wales from heat-related causes by the 2070s, scientists warned yesterday.

- Anna Bawden

Research by UCL and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine suggests that heat mortality could rise more than fiftyfold because of the climate crisis.

They examined a wide range of scenarios, looking at levels of warming, mitigation measures, regional climatic differences and potential power outages. They also modelled the ageing population.

Between 1981 and 2021, there were an average of 634 heat-related deaths a year in England and Wales. The researchers found that - in the worst-case scenario of 4.3C of warming by the end of the century and minimal mitigation - this toll would increase 16-fold to 10,317 in the 2050s and to 34,000 by the 2070s.

Even if temperature rises were limited to 1.6C above preindustrial levels and high levels of adaptation were put in place, annual heat-related deaths would still increase up to sixfold by the 2070s.