Athens, a densely populated city with little green space, is struggling to combat the dangers of heat waves, a “silent and unknown threat,” Eleni Mirivili, a global warming expert at the Greek capital’s mayor’s office, said on Friday. .

Describing heat waves as a “silent killer”, especially in urban areas, a Greek official recalled that “the death rate associated (…) with heat waves is higher than all other extreme weather events linked to climate change “, reports AFP and Agerpres.

“(Heat-related) mortality is very high, we have very little information because we don’t have real data,” she said.

“In fact, very few heat-related deaths are reported and this is an international problem,” Eleni Mirivili told the Eastern Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on Global Warming.

The Mediterranean region, a “hot spot” of climate change

Since the entire eastern part of the Mediterranean is “extremely vulnerable” to heat waves, the City Hall of Athens is going to draw up a three-level plan to combat them: raising public awareness, preparing by implementing the appropriate infrastructure and re-planning some parts of the city, she stressed.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies the Mediterranean region as a “hot spot” of climate change.

According to the IPCC, warming in this region will be about 20% above the global average in the coming decades.

“While we talked about floods and sea level rise and prepared cities for these events, we didn’t really talk about the increase in heat waves, especially in cities,” Eleni Mirivili said.

The latest heat wave hit Athens in particular, a metropolis with 4 million inhabitants

Surrounded by three mountains, Athens is home to more than a third of the country’s population, four million people, and a large car fleet, causing occasional pollution problems, especially in summer, when temperatures often reach over 40 degrees Celsius.

The last heat wave that lasted several days in Greece, in July 2021, hit the metropolis of almost four million people: the thermometer exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, causing devastating forest fires on Mount Parnassus, near the city and on the island of Evia.

In July 1987, the worst heatwave with a temperature of 44 degrees Celsius caused 1,300 deaths.