A severe heatwave gripping France and much of Europe has killed enough people that mortuaries in and around Paris say they are overwhelmed, as authorities count the victims of one of the continent's most extreme heat events on record, France 24 reported.

A mounting toll

France has recorded roughly 1,000 excess deaths during the heatwave, according to the public-health agency Santé publique France, which cautioned that the figure is preliminary and likely to climb as more death certificates are processed. Daily mortality rose sharply at the height of the heat. The toll has fallen heaviest on older people: of the deaths recorded since the peak, the great majority involved those aged 65 and over, echoing the pattern of France's catastrophic 2003 heatwave, which killed an estimated 15,000 people.

Mortuaries at capacity

The strain has reached the point where funeral services cannot keep pace. Mortuaries in the Paris region have filled, and funeral directors have been forced to store bodies far outside the capital, in some cases dozens of kilometers away, while the city authorities scrambled to add temporary cold-storage capacity. For grieving families, the shortage has compounded an already painful moment.

Records across the continent

The heat has been extraordinary in its reach. France registered one of its hottest days on record in late June, and the World Meteorological Organization reported that temperatures elsewhere in Europe soared to extremes, including readings above 45°C in southern Spain, where authorities also reported hundreds of heat-related deaths. In Italy, surging demand for air conditioning strained power supplies. The combination of daytime extremes and unusually hot nights — which give the body little chance to recover — makes such episodes especially dangerous.

The climate link

Scientists have been quick to connect the severity of the heatwave to a warming climate. The World Weather Attribution group, which assesses the role of climate change in extreme events, concluded that human-caused warming made heat of this intensity dramatically more likely — temperatures that, the group said, would have been all but impossible in June a few decades ago, as Al Jazeera reported. Researchers warn that Europe should expect more frequent and more intense heatwaves in the years ahead, putting growing pressure on health systems built for a cooler climate.