The grim death toll from heat waves across European cities this past summer would be captured in shocking headlines if they happened all at once, in a bombing or plane crash—835 in Rome, 630 in Athens, 409 in Paris.

But many of the estimated 24,400 heat mortalities across hundreds of cities during June, July and August were “ silent deaths ” spread over the course of days and weeks of spiking temperatures, in hospitals or in neighborhoods where most people can’t afford air conditioning or to go somewhere cooler.

Often, these deaths are not even listed as heat-related in official reports, said Clair Barnes, an extreme weather and climate research associate at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and co-author of a new study released Wednesday that tallies the impact with an a

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