Maricopa County’s medical examiner isn’t quite done counting heat-related deaths for 2024, but the Department of Public Health told The Arizona Republic this week the totals are likely to come in under that for 2023. It would be the first year in a decade when the number has not increased.
In 2023, 645 people died from factors related to environmental heat in Arizona’s most populous county, with a majority of those cases determined to have been directly caused by heat. That staggering death toll, which drew international attention to metro Phoenix’s record-breaking temperatures due to climate change and urban development, was a 52% increase over the previous year, which was a 25% jump compared to the year before that.
Last year’s heat mortality count was also nearly an eightfold increase over the 84 heat-related deaths in 2015.
“This is not yet absolute by any means, but about 75% of the cases that are under investigation are what we estimate will likely be confirmed,” Dr. Nick Staab, a medical epidemiologist and assistant medical director for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, told The Republic Tuesday. “With our update today, that would be around 609 cases, which would be less than the 645 from last year.”