Scientists urge WHO to declare a global health emergency after a record 710,000 deaths were linked to heat in 2023
Europe bracing for heatwaves in summer 2026, as a WHO-partnered study warns extreme heat killed a record 710,000 people worldwide in 2023 — with a new Super El Niño threatening 857,400 further deaths by March 2027.Extreme-heat death tolls worldwide, as researchers warn Nigeria alone faces over 56,000 projected casualties from the current El Niño threat.
A WHO-partnered Lancet Countdown report published Wednesday estimates that extreme heat killed a record 710,000 people globally in 2023, with scientists warning that climate-related health damage is now gathering pace far more rapidly than it was ten years ago. Human-caused climate change was attributed, for the first time, with more than seven in ten of those deaths, prompting the report's authors to call for climate change to be formally declared a global health emergency ahead of COP31 in Antalya.
Extreme drought now covers 51.8 per cent of all land in 2025 — an area that has grown at a rate more than 700 per cent faster than it did during 2006-2015.
