Overview
- Researchers from Imperial College London, the Met Office and LSHTM estimate about 2,700 excess deaths from heat in England and Wales during two early heatwaves that hit between May 21–29 and June 18–28.
- The team calculates roughly 42% of those deaths were driven by human‑caused warming and that peak daytime temperatures were about 3–4°C higher than they would have been without that warming.
- The June wave caused the bulk of the toll and produced high humidity and unusually warm nights that worsened health risks and overwhelmed ambulance and hospital services.
- The total is a modelled excess‑mortality estimate based on local temperature‑mortality relationships and counterfactual climate runs and is provisional pending an imminent UKHSA interim analysis based on death records.
- Advisers say the events expose adaptation gaps and call for workplace temperature limits, cooling for hospitals and schools, and home and infrastructure measures to protect vulnerable groups such as older people, infants and outdoor workers.