Heatwaves, droughts and floods cost Europe €43 billion this summer, study finds

Extreme weather across Europe this summer caused at least €43 billion in economic losses, researchers reported, a conservative estimate that excludes damage from wildfires, hail and storms and that could climb markedly in the coming years.

The figure is based on weather and economic data for June through August and appears in a paper published in the European Economic Review by researchers at the University of Mannheim. The analysis found 96 European regions experienced heatwaves, 195 suffered drought and 53 were affected by floods during the period. The authors warned the overall bill could rise to €126 billion by 2029 as extreme events become more frequent and severe.

Southern Europe bore the brunt of the costs, with Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and southern France particularly hard hit. The study identified France as the country with the largest financial losses, noting unprecedented maximum temperatures in southwest departments that in some places were as much as 12°C above long-term norms. Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Bulgaria experienced severely and extremely dry conditions that harmed agricultural output and local economies, the researchers said.

Flooding produced the worst financial losses in parts of Italy and Slovenia. In early July, violent storms in Italy’s Lombardy region — home to tourist destinations around lakes Como and Garda — caused flash floods, uprooted trees, disrupted airports and damaged public infrastructure. Renewed extreme weather in late August triggered further floods and evacuations in other regions.

The study’s authors highlighted the vulnerability of smaller economies such as Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus, which lack the same capacity to absorb and recover from clustered climate shocks. Northern European countries including Denmark, Sweden and Germany generally suffered less damage but are seeing increases in the frequency and extent of extreme events, especially flooding.

The report comes as the United Kingdom recorded its warmest and sunniest summer on record. The Met Office has said 2025 was the hottest summer on record and climate attribution analyses indicate this year’s high temperatures were made about 70 times more likely by human-driven climate change. Large parts of England and Wales experienced drought conditions this summer, and hosepipe bans remained in effect in some areas.

Gareth Redmond-King, head of the international programme at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, who was not involved in the study, said the losses will continue to grow until greenhouse gas emissions are brought down to net zero. He warned of knock-on effects for the U.K. economy from disruptions to production in neighbouring countries. "Last year, the U.K. imported nearly five billion tonnes of food worth some £10 billion from the southern European and smaller economies cited in this assessment," he said. "This was around 15 per cent of our overall food imports, and included a range of fresh fruit and veg. The U.K. is on track for one of its worst harvests on record following the third worst last year."

The authors cautioned that the €43 billion estimate is conservative because it excludes losses that are difficult to measure in real time, such as those from wildfires, ecosystem damage and long-term infrastructure degradation. They described extreme weather events as already shaping Europe’s economic development and warned that continued climate change will likely amplify those impacts in coming decades.

Separately, a German-led team of scientists reported that global sea levels could rise between 0.7 and 1.2 metres by the year 2300 even if nations meet the emission-reduction goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The study, led by Dr. Matthias Mengel of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the long-term rise will be driven by continued ice melt from Greenland and Antarctica and thermal expansion of warming oceans. The researchers added that every five years of delay beyond 2020 in peaking global emissions would add roughly 20 centimetres of sea-level rise by 2300.

"Sea level is often communicated as a really slow process that you can't do much about ... but the next 30 years really matter," Dr. Mengel said. The report noted that none of the nearly 200 governments that signed the Paris accords are currently on track to meet their pledged targets.

Taken together, the economic-loss accounting for this summer and long-term sea-level projections underscore the multiple ways climate change is affecting societies now and will continue to shape infrastructure, trade and planning for decades. The University of Mannheim researchers said their findings highlight the urgency of policies to reduce greenhouse gases and to strengthen resilience in the regions most exposed to extreme weather.

The studies add to a growing body of research linking higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns to immediate economic costs and to long-term shifts in global coastlines. Policymakers and businesses facing these risks will need both mitigation — to limit the extent of future climate change — and adaptation measures to manage the losses that are already occurring and those projected in the coming decades.