Dozens drown, schools close, heat records set to be annihilated in Europe

Relentless, deadly heat is tightening its grip on Europe, with temperature records expected to not just fall but be obliterated this week. Scientists warn this extreme heat is a huge problem and a wake-up call to a new reality.

Europe is the planet’s fastest-warming continent, heating at around two to three times the global average, yet it’s woefully underprepared. Its infrastructure was not built for extreme heat; when temperatures spike, rail tracks buckle, power cables break, homes turn into heat traps, and thousands die.

This week is yet another brutal reminder that European heat is becoming both more severe and more frequent. It marks the second record-breaking heatwave in two straight months, with the potential for national all-time temperature records to be broken before July, typically its hottest month.

“This isn’t the new norm at all; this is the foothills of absolute catastrophe,” said Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London.

France, the current epicentre of extreme heat, just posted its hottest day on record. The average – not maximum – national temperature reached 30 degrees, breaking a record last reached in 2019, according to provisional figures from Météo-France. One town saw highs of more than 44 degrees.

The heat has quickly turned deadly. France’s Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced Tuesday that 40 people had drowned since June 18, linking the drownings to soaring temperatures and calling them a “grim scourge”.

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Three elderly people also lost their lives in the heat near Bordeaux, and two children aged two and four were found dead in a hot car in southern France Tuesday.

In the United Kingdom, temperatures are set to soar above 38 degrees this week, with the UK Met Office issuing a very rare red warning for extreme heat, indicating a risk to life.

Hundreds of schools are closing or moving to half days, people have been told to avoid train journeys, and the Met Office has warned of severe impacts on energy and water.

London is “cooking”, said UN Secretary General António Guterres, addressing an audience at London Climate week on Tuesday.

The country’s June temperature record of 36 degrees looks all but certain to be smashed by as much as three degrees this week.

“Obliterating records by several degrees is utterly insane,” said Peter Thorne, director of ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University, Ireland.

In Spain, temperatures exceeded 45 degrees in Andújar, a municipality in the south of the country, according to the weather service AEMET. Nearly the whole country was under a heat alert Tuesday.

Heat alerts are in place for 23 countries in Europe Tuesday, with five at the most severe red level: Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

What is causing the heat?

The soaring temperatures are caused by a heat dome — a vast area of stagnant high pressure parked over swathes of Europe, which acts like a lid on a pot, stubbornly trapping heat.

The heat dome is not unusual for Europe in summer “but the temperatures are”,  said Richard Allan, a climate science professor at the University of Reading. These are being supercharged by climate change, driven by humans burning oil, coal and gas, which raises the background temperature, making every heatwave more intense.

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A strengthening El Niño is also taking shape in the tropical Pacific, which is known to increase the frequency and severity of heat extremes worldwide. However, it’s only just started, “so is having little or no impact” on the current heatwave, said Liz Bentley, CEO of the Royal Meteorological Society. However, it could supercharge heat next summer.

Scientists say that even without El Niño, climate change is the driving force of extreme heat. 

“There’s a sad inevitability to all of this, with scientists like me trotting out the same quotes year after year,” said Friederike Otto, a climate science professor at Imperial College London. 

“Yes it’s climate change, yes it’s us, no it’s not El Niño.”

Why is Europe the fastest-warming continent?

A main reason why Europe is the planet’s fastest warming continent is that parts of it extend into the Arctic. This region is the most rapidly warming place on Earth due to a vicious feedback loop: warmer temperatures melt snow and ice, exposing darker surfaces underneath, which in turn absorb more of the sun’s energy, amplifying the warming.

Anti-pollution legislation, in a cruel twist, has also increased warming because it has cleaned the atmosphere of small pollution particles which, while bad for human health, helped reflect the sun’s energy away from Earth and back into space.

There are also weather circulation changes affecting the continent, Maynooth University’s Thorne said.

These “appear to be making blocking events with heat domes more frequent and long-lived”, he told CNN.

Is Europe heating up more rapidly than predicted?

In short, no — what’s happening now is what scientists have long warned. The increasing severity and extent of European heatwaves “is broadly consistent with what is expected from computer simulations and physical theory”, the University of Reading’s Allan said.

The extent and early appearance of the heat can still surprise, however. “Some impacts may be appearing at the upper end of expectations,” Bentley said.

For example, a 40-degree day in the UK was unprecedented until July 2022 when temperatures reached 41 degrees. That should have been a “wake-up call”, said Otto, “but clearly someone hit snooze.”

That record could potentially fall this week. 

“Hitting 40 degrees again — and in June this time — would be incredibly alarming,” Otto said.

Why is Europe so underprepared for heat?

The temperatures Europe is enduring right now might not sound that extreme to some, but heat hits differently in countries where air conditioning is very rare — only found in about 20 per cent of European homes.

The continent historically had less need for artificial cooling, because prolonged, extreme heat was less common. In northern Europe, many homes were instead built to retain the heat.

“The heat that actually harms people is the heat trapped inside their homes,” said Timur Dogan, an associate professor of architecture at Cornell University. 

“When nights stay hot, heat builds up in the structure day after day, indoor conditions get steadily worse, and the body never recovers,” he added.

In extreme temperatures, especially with high humidity, the body starts to lose its ability to cool itself down, potentially causing heat exhaustion or even heat stroke, which can be fatal. 

“This heat is not an inconvenience, it is a growing public health threat,” Otto said.

Europe’s May and June heatwaves could just be the start of an extreme summer in Europe. 

“There is huge agreement that the next three months will be abnormally warm,” Thorne said.

Europe — in common with much of the rest of the world — has not reckoned with the fact the climate has shifted, he warned.

“Nowhere is truly prepared for what climate change will bring. We have developed everything — and I mean everything — to a stable climate we are rapidly waving goodbye to,” Thorne said. 

“We are definitively entering the find out phase here having done two centuries of mucking about by burning fossil fuels — and it’s not going to be pretty.”