{"id":507931,"date":"2026-06-23T23:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T23:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/507931\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T23:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T23:05:11","slug":"europe-has-a-major-heat-problem-and-its-only-getting-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/507931\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe has a major heat problem, and it\u2019s only getting worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\n Europe is the planet\u2019s fastest-warming continent, heating at around two to three times the global average, yet it\u2019s 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<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n This week is yet another brutal reminder that European heat is becoming both more severe and more frequent. It marks the second record-breaking heat wave<\/a> in two straight months, with the potential for national all-time temperature records to be broken before Europe even reaches July, typically its hottest month.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t the new norm at all; this is the foothills of absolute catastrophe,\u201d said Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u2600\ufe0f Explore CNN Weather for iPhone<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n France, the current epicenter of extreme heat, just posted its hottest day on record<\/a>. The nationally-averaged temperature reached 85.6 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking a record last reached in 2019, according to provisional figures from M\u00e9t\u00e9o-France. One town saw temperatures of over 111 degrees Fahrenheit.\n <\/p>\n

\n The heat has quickly turned deadly. France\u2019s Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu announced Tuesday that 40 people<\/a> had drowned since June 18, linking the drownings to soaring temperatures and calling them a \u201cgrim scourge.\u201d 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<\/a> in southern France Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n In the United Kingdom, temperatures are set to soar into the triple digits this week, with the UK Met Office issuing an very rare red warning for extreme heat, indicating a risk to life.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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 \u201ccooking,\u201d said UN Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, addressing an audience at London Climate week Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n The country\u2019s June temperature record of 96.08 degrees Fahrenheit looks all but certain to be smashed by as much as 6 degrees this week.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cObliterating records by several degrees is utterly insane,\u201d said Peter Thorne, director of ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University, Ireland.\n <\/p>\n

\"Westminster<\/p>\n

\n In Spain, temperatures exceeded 113 degrees Fahrenheit in And\u00fajar, a municipality in the south of the country, according to the weather service AEMET<\/a>. Nearly the whole country was under a heat alert Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n The soaring temperatures are caused by a heat dome \u2014 a vast area of stagnant high pressure parked over swaths of Europe, which acts like a lid on a pot, stubbornly trapping heat.\n <\/p>\n

\n The heat dome is not unusual for Europe in summer, \u201cbut the temperatures are,\u201d 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 heat wave more intense.\n <\/p>\n

\n A strengthening El Ni\u00f1o is also taking shape in the tropical Pacific, which known to increase the frequency and severity of heat extremes worldwide. However, it\u2019s only just started, \u201cso is having little or no impact\u201d on the current heat wave, said Liz Bentley, CEO of the Royal Meteorological Society. However, it could supercharge heat next summer.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Scientists say that even without El Ni\u00f1o, climate change is the driving force of extreme heat. \u201cThere\u2019s a sad inevitability to all of this, with scientists like me trotting out the same quotes year after year,\u201d said Friederike Otto, a climate science professor at Imperial College London. \u201cYes it\u2019s climate change, yes it\u2019s us, no it\u2019s not El Ni\u00f1o.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n A main reason why Europe is the planet\u2019s 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\u2019s energy, amplifying the warming.\n <\/p>\n

\n Anti-pollution legislation, in a cruel twist,<\/a> has also increased warming because it has cleaned the atmosphere of small pollution particles which, while bad for human health, helped reflect the sun\u2019s energy away from Earth and back into space.\n <\/p>\n

\n There are also weather circulation changes affecting the continent, Maynooth University\u2019s Thorne said. These \u201cappear to be making blocking events with heat domes more frequent and long-lived,\u201d he told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n In short, no \u2014 what\u2019s happening now is what scientists have long warned. The increasing severity and extent of European heatwaves \u201cis broadly consistent with what is expected from computer simulations and physical theory,\u201d the University of Reading\u2019s Allan said.\n <\/p>\n

\n The extent and early appearance of the heat can still surprise, however. \u201cSome impacts may be appearing at the upper end of expectations,\u201d Bentley said.\n <\/p>\n

\n For example, 104-degree Fahrenheit day in the UK was unprecedented until July 2022 when temperatures reached 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit<\/a>. That should have been a \u201cwake-up call,\u201d said Otto, \u201cbut clearly someone hit snooze.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n That record could potentially fall this week. Hitting 104 degrees Fahrenheit again \u201cand in June this time \u2014 would be incredibly alarming,\u201d Otto said.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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 \u2014 only found in around 20% of European homes.\n <\/p>\n

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

\n \u201cThe heat that actually harms people is the heat trapped inside their homes,\u201d said Timur Dogan, an associate professor of architecture at Cornell University. \u201cWhen nights stay hot, heat builds up in the structure day after day, indoor conditions get steadily worse, and the body never recovers,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n In extreme temperatures, especially with high humidity, the body starts to lose its ability to cool itself down<\/a>, potentially causing heat exhaustion or even heat stroke, which can be fatal. \u201cThis heat is not an inconvenience, it is a growing public health threat,\u201d Otto said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Europe\u2019s May and June heat waves could just be the start of an extreme summer in Europe. \u201cThere is huge agreement that the next three months will be abnormally warm,\u201d Thorne said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Europe \u2014 in common with much of the rest of the world \u2014 has not reckoned with the fact the climate has shifted, he warned.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cNowhere is truly prepared for what climate change will bring. We have developed everything \u2014 and I mean everything \u2014 to a stable climate we are rapidly waving goodbye to,\u201d Thorne said. \u201cWe are definitively entering the find out phase here having done two centuries of mucking about by burning fossil fuels \u2014 and its not going to be pretty.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Relentless, deadly heat is tightening its grip on Europe, with temperature records expected to not just fall but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-507931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}