Europe’s summer of extreme heat caused an estimated 50,000 deaths in cities across the region — the highest number on record — and wiped roughly 0.17% from European Union gross domestic product from April through September, or close to €17 billion ($18.9 billion).

Those findings, from two separate studies, reveal the extent of Europe’s vulnerability to rising temperatures in what’s likely to be one of the hottest years in modern history.

The estimated death toll comes from a study released Friday, led by scientists at Imperial College London, which determined that almost two-thirds of the deaths linked to high summer temperatures would not have happened without climate change. A recent study from Bloomberg Economics, meanwhile, measured the hit to Europe’s GDP at 2.5 times the average loss for the period over the previous decade.

The overall mortality level, triggered by a series of record-breaking heat waves, was far higher than those in the next most deadly years.…