{"id":658959,"date":"2026-06-26T07:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/658959\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T07:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:55:09","slug":"european-heatwave-is-worst-ever-and-impossible-without-climate-crisis-scientists-say-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/658959\/","title":{"rendered":"European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say | Climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The heatwave scorching western Europe<\/a> is the most severe and widespread ever and is only possible due to the climate crisis driven by fossil fuel burning, scientists have said.<\/p>\n

Almost half of Europe\u2019s 850 largest cities are also enduring their worst ever heat stress, a combination of temperature and humidity, they found. Muggier conditions mean sweating is less effective at cooling the body, making heatwaves even more dangerous.<\/p>\n

The analysis comes as the UK recorded its hottest ever June temperature on Thursday<\/a>, 36.7C (98.06F) in Somerset, and much of western Europe recorded a sharp rise in medical emergencies, including some deaths.<\/p>\n

In summer 2022, more than 60,000 people died due to heat in Europe. The statistical analysis needed to assess the impact of the current heatwave will take time to complete. Nonetheless, the heatwave is certain to exact a heavy toll and is also disrupting lives and livelihoods, with schools closed, hospitals struggling<\/a> and rail and air journeys cancelled across the continent.<\/p>\n

The new analysis by scientists from the World Weather Attribution<\/a> (WWA) consortium shows how rapidly extreme heat is worsening as carbon pollution continues to pile up in the atmosphere. As recently as 2003, a heatwave like the current one in Europe would have been 2C cooler due to the lower level of global heating at the time. In 1976, another famous heatwave year, it would have been 3.5C cooler.<\/p>\n

The sweltering night-time temperatures currently harming people\u2019s sleep are about 100 times more likely today than in 2003. The scientists warned that without urgent climate action, future heat conditions would get even more extreme and the current summer could seem relatively cool in retrospect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the most severe and widespread heatwave to have ever affected this large a region of Europe,\u201d said Dr Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather research associate at Imperial College London and part of the WWA team. \u201cWe found that in the last 50 years, during which time the planet has warmed by 1.1C, the chance of a heatwave like this has changed immensely. This event would not have been possible in June without climate change. But do we expect this to be a cool summer going forward? That\u2019s absolutely the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said many capital cities were experiencing not only their hottest recorded three-day period in June but the hottest three-day period at any time of year. At least 100 million people in Europe were expected to face temperatures above 35C on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The scientists used wet bulb globe temperatures to assess the additional impact of high humidity<\/a>. \u201cIt accounts for the ability of the human body to cool itself down. With the worst conditions ever experienced in 45% of cities over 50,000 people, the health impacts of this heatwave are likely to be extremely high,\u201d Keeping said. \u201cThe speed of change is startling.\u201d<\/p>\n

A map of western Europe showing the heatwave\u2019s temperatures compared to seasonal averages<\/a>The heatwave has broken temperature records across Europe<\/p>\n

Commenting on the WWA analysis, Simon Stiell, the UN\u2019s climate chief, said: \u201cClimate change is running rampant, caused by the world\u2019s addiction to burning coal, oil and gas. But the solutions are equally clear: a faster shift to clean energy \u2013 which is now much cheaper than fossil fuels \u2013 as well as protecting forests and building climate resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The WWA team used both observed and reliable forecast temperature data to analyse the hottest three-day period across a large area of western Europe, which is sitting under a \u201cheat dome\u201d. Using peer-reviewed methods, they found unequivocally that climate change was the driving force behind the severity of the heat.<\/p>\n

They ruled out natural variability of the weather, in particular any influence from the El Ni\u00f1o<\/a> event that has begun in the Pacific Ocean. The current weather pattern, a blocked high-pressure system trapping hot air over Europe and drawing warm air up from the Sahara, is not unusual in summer, the scientists said. Instead, the level of heat has been supercharged by global heating.<\/p>\n

Carolina Pereira Marghidan, of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said: \u201cAfter the devastating 2003 heatwave in Europe, many countries invested in early warning systems and action plans. Research shows that those have saved many lives, but it\u2019s not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

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She said intensifying heat was increasingly affecting health, transport, energy systems and daily life. \u201cWe need greater investment in heat-resilient homes, cities and infrastructure to keep people safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UK government\u2019s official adviser, the Climate Change Committee, said in May that the country\u2019s infrastructure was \u201cbuilt for a climate that no longer exists\u201d<\/a> and needed urgent improvement to protect people from the climate crisis. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) found that more than 10,000 people<\/a> died in Britain owing to summer heatwaves between 2020 and 2024.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the London ambulance service responded to its highest ever number of life-threatening emergencies in a single day \u2013 641. Older people, children and those with vulnerabilities are most at risk, but the current red alerts from the UKHSA and Met Office warn that everyone is in danger. On Thursday the UKHSA extended its red heat-health alert<\/a> by 24 hours, to 11pm on Friday.<\/p>\n

A study of a smaller and less intense European heatwave in 2024 found that in 12 cities alone, more than 2,300 people lost their lives in three days because of the higher temperatures. \u201cWe found two-thirds of the 2,300 would not have died if it wasn\u2019t for climate change,\u201d said Prof Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and a co-founder of WWA.<\/p>\n

\u201cScientists like me are beginning to sound like a broken record, reacting year after year to heat extremes that climb ever higher,\u201d she said. \u201cYes this is climate change, yes it\u2019s us, yes we have the solutions, no we\u2019re not implementing them fast enough. It\u2019s really now a question of what kind of future we want for ourselves, and whether we\u2019re willing to do what it takes to secure it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last October, health experts said rising global heat was now killing one person a minute<\/a> around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The heatwave scorching western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever and is only possible due to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-658959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}