This summer was one of the hottest on record in Europe, with temperatures soaring above 46 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit), triggering wildfires and causing the deaths of thousands of people, particularly among the elderly.Climate change is likely to be responsible for 68 percent, or about 16,500, of additional heat-related deaths, according to new research from the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment in London, United Kingdom.This is partly because rising temperatures triggered by human-caused climate change are the main cause of the intense wildfires that ravaged parts of the continent this year. Four times as much land area as the usual annual average was burned in Spain at 380,000 hectares (940,000 acres) – more than five times the size of Singapore. In Portugal, 280,000 hectares (690,000 acres) of land was burned – larger than the area of the country of Luxembourg and two-and-a-half times the annual average.Intense wildfires were also reported in France, Italy, Greece, Albania and Turkiye this year. But Spain bore the brunt of the heat this year with more than 1,100 deaths blamed on a 16-day heatwave in August, according to the Madrid-based Carlos III Health Institute.Elderly people with underlying health conditions were particularly vulnerable to overheating of indoor environments, the study found.What did the study find?The Grantham Institute study, which examined 854 European cities, found that the average rise in temperature by approximately 3.6C (6.48F) was responsible for 68 percent of the 24,400 estimated heat-related deaths this summer.The analysis of the data gathered across European cities was carried out by researchers at the Imperial College of London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.The two institutions warned that the result is only “a snapshot” of the real death toll linked to extreme heat, as the cities studied represent only a third of Europe’s population. It stated that extreme heat is the “deadliest type of weather” and that the officially reported heat deaths in Europe remain “significantly underestimated”.The results of the research “underscore why extreme heat is known as a silent killer”, the report’s authors said.Which countries were worst affected?Additional heat-related deaths as a result of climate change were reported as follows: