They looked at the 2022 outlier year in terms of heat across Europe, and then found strong correlations with the hottest weeks in the hottest locations in terms of heat-related deaths from the trends established over the prior 5 years. Seems pretty robust and they did a number of tests to ensure it was a reliable result.
Sure, but my original post was restricted to Europe and per that Lancet study, it's only maybe 3.5x more (660k cold vs. 180k hot) -- hence why the 2022 year stood out so much.
The authors of the prior study estimated 70,000 excess deaths due to heat in 2022 alone which is nearly 40% of the total for the 20 year period from 2000-2019 -- or about 8x the 'background rate' of excess heat deaths. If we are seeing warming and years like 2022 are going to be more common, that's a really, really big deal.
E.g; Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022 - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z
They looked at the 2022 outlier year in terms of heat across Europe, and then found strong correlations with the hottest weeks in the hottest locations in terms of heat-related deaths from the trends established over the prior 5 years. Seems pretty robust and they did a number of tests to ensure it was a reliable result.