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  • Europe heat wave: The UK, France, and Spain are breaking temperature records faster than expected

    Europe heat wave: The UK, France, and Spain are breaking temperature records faster than expected

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    The United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office declared its first ever “red warning” for exceptional heat over the weekend. Meanwhile, the UK Health Security Agency raised its heat alert level to 4, triggering a national emergency. And on Tuesday, the UK broke its national record for the highest temperature ever recorded: 39.1 degrees Celsius, or 102.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Forecasters warn the numbers could climb higher.

    “In this country, we’re used to treating a hot spell as a chance to go and play in in the sun,” said Penny Endersby, chief executive of the Met Office, in a statement. “This is not that sort of weather.” The heat in the UK has disrupted trains and flights. Hospitals are bracing for an influx of heat-related casualties, and Covid-19 cases are rising as well.

    Across the channel, France broke more than 100 all-time heat records across the country in the past week. But just as energy demand is spiking with people desperate to cool off, the high temperatures have forced France to cut down its nuclear power output since the rivers used to cool the power plants have become too hot. Much of Europe is already dealing with a spike in energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led countries to reduce their use of Russian oil and gas.

    A resident fights a forest fire with a shovel during a wildfire in Tabara, Spain, on July 19. Firefighters battled wildfires raging out of control in Spain and France during an extreme heat wave that authorities blamed for hundreds of deaths.
    Bernat Armangue/AP

    Spanish authorities estimate more than 500 people nationwide have already died from the heat through the weekend. High temperatures are fueling a spike in ozone pollution. The heat and dry weather have also created ideal conditions for wildfires, and blazes have already ignited in France, Spain, and Portugal, creating harrowing scenes of flames encroaching on homes, roads, and trains while forcing thousands to evacuate.

    The recent heat wave is a reminder that disasters are rarely polite enough to wait their turn. Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, and the economic stresses of inflation are making it more difficult for countries to respond to the severe weather, and compounding its toll.

    The severe heat this week across Europe is unusual for the continent, but it’s not surprising. Scientists have warned for years that more frequent and intense heat waves are one of the most direct consequences of climate change, even in places used to mild weather. While the whole planet has warmed on average by about 2°F since the Industrial Revolution, that small rise in the average is leading to a large spike in extreme temperatures.

    Even so, the recent heat is leading scientists to rethink just how quickly extreme temperatures could arrive. But it’s clear that more sweltering summers lie ahead for Europe.

    Swimmers walk on a pier in southwestern France, under a large cloud of black smoke and ash from a wildfire consuming the thousand-year-old forest bordering the Dune du Pilat on July 18.
    Sophie Garcia/AP

    The recent heat wave is exposing Europe’s unique vulnerabilities

    Though countries in Europe are wealthy, heat is still a major threat to people and to infrastructure. Europe’s ordinarily mild climate has meant that many homes and businesses have not invested in air conditioning. Fewer than 5 percent of homes across Europe have air conditioning, according to the International Energy Agency.

    And compared to people who live in warmer climates, Europeans themselves are also less acclimated to extreme heat. That can mean people miss the warning signs of heat danger. These patterns are why heat waves are often more dangerous in cooler climates. In fact, one of the biggest predictors of the dangers of a heat wave is not how high temperatures get, but how much they deviate from the norm for an area.

    Europe is also highly urbanized. About 72 percent of European Union residents live in cities, towns, and suburbs. The concrete, glass, and steel of urban environments and the relative lack of green spaces turns cities into heat islands that stay hotter than their surroundings.

    People seeking relief from the heat swim in the Sky Pool, a clear acrylic swimming pool fixed between two apartment blocks in London, England, on July 17.
    Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

    One especially dangerous aspect of the current heat wave is how warm it’s been after sunset. The UK just broke its record for the hottest temperature recorded at night. In many parts of the world, nighttime temperatures are rising faster than daytime heat. This often leads to worse health problems because people find little relief as heat stress mounts.

    “Nights are also likely to be exceptionally warm, especially in urban areas,” said Neil Armstrong, chief meteorologist at the UK Met Office, in a statement. “This is likely to lead to widespread impacts on people and infrastructure. Therefore, it is important people plan for the heat and consider changing their routines.”

    Europe may face even more extreme heat in the future because of changes in the jet streams, the narrow, fast-moving bands of air in the upper atmosphere. A study published earlier this month in Nature Communications found that the jet streams are shifting in ways that amplify heat over the European continent.

    So the combination of human factors, changes in regional weather patterns, and warming around the world is converging to worsen the toll of extreme heat in Europe.

    A man takes advantage of relatively cooler morning hours for a run on the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany, on July 18.
    Michael Probst/AP

    Europe has been expecting more heat waves, but the current one is still alarming

    Much of Europe remains haunted by the 2003 heat wave that killed more than 70,000 people. The good news is that natural disasters like heat waves are becoming less deadly around the world. Better forecasting and more tools to cope with heat have saved lives in Europe. But with disrupted travel, increasing hospital visits, and lost productivity, heat is still extracting a growing social and economic toll.

    That’s why, although few Europeans have air conditioners in their homes, worries about extreme heat have been mounting for years.

    In 2014, French weather presenter Évelyne Dhéliat imagined an August weather forecast for France in the year 2050 using projections from the World Meteorological Organization. She showed the kind of weather that would be likely after decades of additional warming, with temperatures rising to 109°F in southern France.

    But as the French magazine L’Obs points out in the video below, much of that imagined midcentury forecast already came true in 2019:

    The recent heat wave showed similar heat patterns to those projections across France. In 2020, the UK Met Office did the same exercise, creating a hypothetical weather forecast for 2050. That forecast has also come true this week:

    So does this heat wave mean the weather of tomorrow is already here and that climate models underestimated what’s in store?

    It’s not clear yet. Temperatures in Europe this week certainly expand the realm of what’s possible in the present and into the future. “It’s definitely extreme in terms of what’s happened historically, but we should be expecting that we’ll hit more and more extremes moving forward,” said Isla Simpson, a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

    However, scientists are still trying to figure out how the current European heat wave fits into previous forecasts and whether it’s more extreme than predicted. Climate models do show that Europe is capable of reaching triple-digit temperatures in the current era, but researchers are calculating how much more likely they’ve become. The current heat wave isn’t over yet, and it will take some time to compare climate predictions to the actual results. Researchers are also investigating exactly how much human-caused climate change made it worse.

    Travelers wait at a London railway station during a heat wave that led to rail and air travel delays, on July 18.
    Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    “Climate change has already influenced the likelihood of temperature extremes in the UK,” said Nikos Christidis, a climate scientist at the UK Met Office, in a statement. “The chances of seeing 40°C [104°F] days in the UK could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence.”

    In past heat waves, climate simulations struggled to anticipate the severe temperatures already manifesting in some parts of the world, like the expansive blob of heat that settled over the Pacific Northwest last year.

    “It was hard for our models to produce an event that extreme even if you account for climate change,” Simpson said. “We will have to start to wonder, are we missing something, or are we just very unlucky?”

    Of course, Europe isn’t the only place that’s sweating this summer. Much of the US is also facing a heat wave that has worsened wildfires and created risks of power outages, while India and Pakistan saw a massive heat wave across the region in May.

    And climate change is expected to nudge future thermometers even higher. As hot as it’s already been, this is still likely to be one of the coolest summers we’re going to experience for the rest of our lives.



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  • UK breaks record for highest temperature as Europe sizzles

    UK breaks record for highest temperature as Europe sizzles

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    LONDON – Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday amid a heat wave that has seared swaths of Europe, as the UK’s national weather forecaster said such highs are now a fact of life in a country ill-prepared for such extremes.
    The typically temperate nation was just the latest to be walloped by unusually hot, dry weather that has triggered wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans and led to hundreds of heat-related deaths. Images of flames racing toward a French beach and Britons sweltering – even at the seaside – have driven home concerns about climate change.
    The UK Met Office weather agency registered a provisional reading of 40.3 degrees Celsius (104.5 degrees Fahrenheit) at Coningsby in eastern England – breaking the record set just hours earlier. Before Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F), set in 2019. By later afternoon, 29 places in the UK had broken the record.
    As the nation watched with a combination of horror and fascination, Met Office chief scientist Stephen Belcher said such temperatures in Britain were “virtually impossible” without human-driven climate change.
    He warned that “we could see temperatures like this every three years” without serious action on carbon emissions.
    The sweltering weather has disrupted travel, health care and schools. Many homes, small businesses and even public buildings, including hospitals, in Britain don’t have air conditioning, a reflection of how unusual such heat is in the country better known for rain and mild temperatures.
    The intense heat since Monday has damaged the runway at London’s Luton airport, forcing it to shut for several hours, and warped a main road in eastern England, leaving it looking like a “skatepark,” police said. Major train stations were shut or near-empty Tuesday, as trains were canceled or ran at low speeds out of concern rails could buckle.
    London was faced with what Mayor Sadiq Khan called a “huge surge” in fires because of the heat. The London Fire Brigade listed 10 major blazes it was fighting across the city Tuesday, half of them grass fires. Images showed several houses engulfed in flames as smoke billowed from burning fields in Wennington, a village on the eastern outskirts of London.
    Sales of fans at one retailer, Asda, increased by 1,300%. Electric fans cooled the traditional mounted troops of the Household Cavalry as they stood guard in central London in heavy ceremonial uniforms. Other guards reduced their duties to stay out of the sun. The capital’s Hyde Park, normally busy with walkers, was eerily quiet – except for the long lines to take a dip in the Serpentine lake.
    “I’m going to my office because it is nice and cool,” said geologist Tom Elliott, 31, after taking a swim. “I’m cycling around instead of taking the Tube.”
    Ever the stalwart, Queen Elizabeth II carried on working. The 96-year-old monarch held a virtual audience with new U.S. ambassador Jane Hartley from the safety of Windsor Castle.
    A huge chunk of England, from London in the south to Manchester and Leeds in the north, remained under the country’s first “red” warning for extreme heat Tuesday, meaning there is danger of death even for healthy people.
    Such dangers could be seen in Britain and across Europe. At least six people were reported to have drowned while trying to cool off in rivers, lakes and reservoirs across the U.K. In Spain and neighboring Portugal, nearly 750 heat-related deaths have been reported in the heat wave there.
    Climate experts warn that global warming has increased the frequency of extreme weather events, with studies showing that the likelihood of temperatures in the U.K. reaching 40 C (104 F) is now 10 times higher than in the pre-industrial era.
    The head of the U.N. weather agency expressed hope that the heat gripping Europe would serve as a “wake-up call” for governments to do more on climate change. Other scientists used the milestone moment to underscore that it was time to act.
    “While still rare, 40C is now a reality of British summers,” said Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change. “Whether it will become a very common occurrence or remains relatively infrequent is in our hands and is determined by when and at what global mean temperature we reach net zero.”
    Drought and heat waves tied to climate change have also made wildfires more common and harder to fight.
    In the Gironde region of southwestern France, ferocious wildfires continued to spread through tinder-dry pines forests, frustrating firefighting efforts by more than 2,000 firefighters and water-bombing planes.
    Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from homes and summer vacation spots since the fires broke out July 12, Gironde authorities said.
    A smaller third fire broke out late Monday in the Medoc wine region north of Bordeaux, further taxing resources. Five camping sites went up in flames in the Atlantic coast beach zone where blazes raged around the Arcachon maritime basin famous for its oysters and resorts.
    In Greece, a large forest fire broke out northeast of Athens, fanned by high winds. Fire Service officials said nine firefighting aircraft and four helicopters were deployed to try to stop the flames from reaching inhabited areas on the slopes of Mount Penteli, some 25 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of the capital. Smoke from the fire blanketed part of the city’s skyline.
    But weather forecasts offered some consolation, with temperatures expected to ease along the Atlantic seaboard Tuesday and the possibility of rains rolling in late in the day.
    Britain was not the only northern European country experiencing unusual heat. As Amsterdam baked Tuesday, municipal workers sprayed water on some mechanical bridges over the Dutch city’s canals to prevent metal in them from expanding, which can jam them shut blocking boat traffic. Temperatures in the city are expected to approach 39 C (102 F) Tuesday.



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