Planting more trees in European cities could significantly reduce deaths from increasingly hot summer temperatures, according to a new study.

Increasing forest cover from 14.9% European average to 30% would reduce urban temperatures by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which could reduce mortality associated with with abnormal heat by 39.5%according to a first-of-its-kind study that used models from 93 European cities.

Study lead author Tamara Jungman, from the Institute for Global Health in Barcelona, ​​said the need for more trees in cities is becoming “increasingly urgent” as Europe records more extreme temperature fluctuations due to climate change.

“We already know that high temperatures in urban settings are associated with negative health outcomes such as cardiorespiratory failure, hospitalization and premature death.”

The science team wants to convince policy makers to make cities greener, more resilient, resilient and with healthy citizens, mitigating climate collapse, Jungmann added. Over the next decade, heat-related illness and death is expected to place a greater burden on health services than cold-related events.

The researchers used mortality data to estimate the potential reduction in mortality from planting trees in large areas of the urban environment.

Thousands fewer deaths

Using data from 2015, they calculated that of the 6,700 premature deaths associated with warmer urban temperatures that year, 2,644 could have been avoided if forest cover had increased.

In southern and eastern Europe

The cities most likely to benefit from increased forest cover are in southern and eastern Europe, where summer temperatures are higher and forest cover tends to be lower.

Cluj-Napoca, Romania, which had the highest rate of premature death from heat in 2015 at 32 per 100,000 people, has a tree cover of just 7%. In Lisbon, Portugal, only 3.6%, and in Barcelona – 8.4%. In contrast, London has a tree cover of 15.5% and Oslo 34%.

One of the authors of the study, Mark Nugenhuizen, a researcher at the Institute for Global Health in Barcelona, ​​said that many cities have set themselves the goal of achieving 30 percent forest cover.