Skillful heat-related mortality forecasting during the European summer of 2022

Emma Holmberg

Europe has been identified as a heatwave hotspot, with numerous temperature records having been broken in recent summers, and roughly 60,000 heat-related deaths occurring in the summer of 2022. With recent summers, like that of 2022, projected to become the new norm, there is a pressing need to further develop heat-health warning systems to help society adapt to a warming climate. Here, we evaluate the skill of daily heat-related mortality forecasts for the summer of 2022, before then comparing the uncertainty from meteorological and epidemiological perspectives. For most parts of Europe, enhanced heat-related mortality forecasts were associated with milder temperatures, close to the minimum mortality temperature, whilst forecast uncertainty was largest for high temperatures. Nonetheless, some of the hottest regions in Europe showed increased predictability associated with higher temperatures, suggesting that mortality forecasts can provide valuable information in regions also associated with high levels of heat-related mortality, which could inform heat-warning systems.