Climate change is known to affect deaths and hospitalizations associated with heat exposure in Europe. Yet, despite a broad scientific knowledge base on the future impacts of climate change, few studies so far have formally attributed heat-related mortality and morbidity to climate change that has already occurred over the past century. The project ATTACH contributed to the closing of this important research gap, with a special focus on recent European heatwaves. The project made use of death count statistics from major cities and all federal states in Germany, and combined state-of-the-art epidemiological methods with an innovative approach to climate impact attribution.
One important conclusion from the work performed is that monitoring systems based on weekly data considerably underestimate heat-related excess mortality compared to analyses based on daily death count data. Accurately measuring heat-related excess mortality is important for the evaluation of adaptation measures adopted, such as heat-health action plans or early warning systems. As such the project also contributed to the implementation of the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy, which requires adaptation actions to rely on robust data and risk assessment tools.
The project also showed that human-caused climate change increasingly affects heat-related excess mortality in Germany. These results can contribute to rising the awareness about climate change in the general population, and may also serve as arguments in future climate litigation cases.
