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Science Weekly

The mystery of Europe’s heat death hotspot

Science Weekly

The Guardian

Science

4.21K Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2023

⏱️ 16 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ian Sample hears from the Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent, Ajit Niranjan, about the reporting he has been doing for the launch of our new Europe edition. He talks about Osijek, a Croatian city that has the highest heat mortality rate in Europe … but no one knows why. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian.

0:10.0

So, so, skin.

0:12.0

Get your mom. So, so, so skin.

0:18.0

Get your morning mojo going with Mullah like Greek style.

0:27.0

Now with a new recipe, with Vitamin B6 and Vitamin D. Let's have it! Mull-a-light, get the good going.

0:30.0

I turned up in Osiek, I guess maybe 10 o'clock on a weekday evening, having just sat on a train from Zagreb that was baking, like really horrendous

0:42.6

horrendous heat.

0:43.6

That's Agit Naranjan.

0:45.6

He's the Guardian's new Europe environment

0:48.0

correspondent, and he's been investigating

0:50.4

a troubling anomaly in Croatia and getting hot in the process.

0:55.0

The air condition I hadn't worked properly and so I was in a carriage of people just sweating buckets.

1:00.0

On the surface, Osieck isn't any different to other Mediterranean cities.

1:06.0

It's a nice pretty eastern Croatian city. It's in the Slovenia region.

1:12.0

Very near the border with Serbia, it's very agricultural, lots of buildings

1:16.4

built in the Austro-Hungarian Empire times.

1:19.6

So it's a very charming little place to go visit. I mean for a city break I could

1:25.2

absolutely recommend it. But there is one thing that distinguishes Osiek.

1:29.9

One of the studies I came across trying to work out how much heat had really

1:36.8

silently been killing people over the last two decades. And the scientists had

1:42.2

kind of managed to also find a particular location that was the worst affected but it didn't know it.

1:48.5

And what I kind of found was that everyone I was speaking to kept giving me more factors that would indicate

...

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