Around 37 percent heat deaths caused due to climate change, confirms new study

On average, almost 37 percent of heat deaths can be owed to human-caused climate change, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change, reported The Verge.

The study delves into data from 732 locations in 43 countries over a period of around three decades, from 1991-2018.

They utilize information involving heat deaths and temperature readings from those places to form computer models that calculate the number of deaths that could be blamed on climate change.

The numbers vary according to places, with a huge percentage of climate-change-related deaths happening in hot countries than cooler ones.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 166,000 people died of heat-related deaths between 1998 and 2017. Due to climate change, more people are coming in contact with heat waves than ever before.

“Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people exposed to heatwaves increased by around 125 million,” the WHO predicts.

There is one remarkable limitation to this new study, even though hundreds of places were taken, many areas of Africa and Southeast Asia were left out due to lack of data.

Collecting that data in the future will be very essential for new efforts to form a global accounting of heat-related deaths and illnesses.