Western Europe this year experienced its hottest June on record as a searing heatwave swept across a continent facing increasingly frequent and intense heat extremes, the EU’s climate monitor has said.
The report comes as a new heatwave is battering Europe this week, following a record-breaking one in June and an unusually early spring hot spell in May.
The average temperature in western Europe reached 20.74C in June, more than 3C above the 1991-2020 norm, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
It broke the region’s previous record set in June 2025.
“We will see more heatwaves in a warmer world,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which operates Copernicus.
A photo from 24 June shows a map of European temperatures as a heatwave is scorching the continent
“They will be more intense and they will last longer, and they will impact more geographical areas,” Dr Burgess said.
“Due to that rapid warming for Europe, it means we’re more susceptible to heat waves at this time of year. And we’ve really seen that with the heat waves in May, in June, and now early July.”
It was the second hottest June on record for the world and for Europe as a whole, Copernicus said, as human-induced climate change continues to push temperatures higher.
Global temperatures in June were 1.39C above the estimated pre-industrial average, a period covering 1850-1900, according to Copernicus.
The world’s oceans experienced their highest June temperatures on record, against a backdrop of the warming El Niño weather pattern which is developing and is forecast to strengthen in the tropical Pacific.
Dr Burgess said that the June heatwave couldn’t be specifically blamed on climate change but that heatwaves were more likely, and more likely to be intensive due to climate change. It will also make heatwaves last longer.
“This is reflecting a structural shift in our climate rather than natural variability,” she said, Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One
“So events now occur earlier, they last longer, they’re more intense, and they combine with drought and other stresses.
“And this really exposes the vulnerability across Europe, that Europe’s infrastructure was designed for a cooler, more stable climate that no longer exists, and we regularly, particularly in the summer periods, exceed the operating limits of our infrastructure.
“We’re at a transition point where climate change is shifting from being an abstract statistical future problem that you read about in reports, to a concrete present and disruptive feature of daily life.”
‘Heat dome’
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, and changes in atmospheric circulation are fuelling more frequent and more intense heatwaves on the continent.
June was particularly brutal for Europe as a “heat dome” – a high-pressure system acting like a lid on a boiling pot – led to all-time and monthly temperature records in several countries.
Thousands of deaths were linked to the heatwave – mostly in France, Spain and Belgium.
More than two-thirds of Europeans – 410 million people – endured temperatures topping 35C during the heatwave between 15-30, according to an AFP analysis.
The June heatwave “contributed to severe health impacts, including heat-related deaths”, Copernicus said.
Police use water cannon to spray people with water amid high temperatures in Berlin
High rates of humidity were one of the reasons why the June heatwave was so intense, Burgess said.
“It was extremely humid, which then meant we people didn’t get relief at night. So we had a number of tropical nights in a row,” she said.
The Mediterranean experienced its own record-breaking marine heatwave, with the continent’s Atlantic coasts also hit by hot spells, putting ecosystems at risk.
“When the sea is warm, we get less alleviation at nighttime because there’s no coolness coming from the ocean. There’s no sea breeze,” Ms Burgess said.
Dry conditions raised drought risks in eastern Europe and contributed to wildfire activity in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, Copernicus said.
Older buildings
World Weather Attribution, a network of climate scientists, said last month that Europe’s June heatwave was the “most severe ever recorded” based on a three-day forecast of average peak temperatures over the region studied.
Such a heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change, they said. A similar event in June 2003 would have been about 2C cooler.
Ms Burgess said Europe needs adaptation plans to cope with climate change.
“Many amazing buildings across Europe were built hundreds of years ago, and that climate no longer exists,” she said.
The world, Ms Burgess said, needs to get to net-zero emissions from the burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible.
“Heatwaves will only get worse the more (emissions from) fossil fuel we pump into the atmosphere,” she said.