The heatwave in southern Europe<\/a> comes as Nordic countries recover from unprecedentedtemperatures above 30C in the Arctic Circle this month.<\/p>\n Bob Ward, a policy director at the Grantham Research Institute, said: \u201cThis summer, like every summer now, has been exceptional in terms of extreme heat around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n In Italy, where 16 of 27 major cities were placed under red heat alerts and a four-year-old boy died of heatstroke, and in Spain, where a man died in a wildfire after suffering burns on 98% of his body, the high heat did not break a large number of records but still rang alarm bells.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main characteristic [of the heatwave] is the length and extent rather than the intensity,\u201d said Jos\u00e9 Camacho, a climate scientist and spokesperson for Aemet, the Spanish weather agency. \u201cBut the temperatures are still very high.\u201d<\/p>\n In the south-west of France, 40% of a sample of weather stations recorded temperatures above 40C on Monday. Lauriane Batt\u00e9, a climate scientist at M\u00e9t\u00e9o France, said it was too soon to say if records were being \u201cshattered\u201d rather than simply broken, but said the geographic extent of the heat was significant.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s to be expected,\u201d she said, adding that more than half of the 51 heatwaves in France since 1947 had occurred in the last 15 years. \u201cClearly, it\u2019s a sign that the climate is warming.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The hot weather across Europe has dried out vegetation and allowed wildfires to spread further, in what scientists have described as a \u201cmolotov cocktail\u201d of climatic conditions. EU fire scientists projected \u201cextreme to very extreme conditions\u201d across the entire continent this week, with \u201cparticularly severe\u201d risks in much of southern Europe and high anomalies expected in parts of the Nordics.<\/p>\n Wildfires in Europe have burned more than 400,000 hectares so far this year, according to data published on Tuesday, which is 87% more than the average for this time of year over the last two decades.<\/p>\n High heat kills tens of thousands of people in Europe each year. Researchers estimate that dangerous temperatures in Europe will kill 8,000 to 80,000 more people a year by the end of the century as the lives lost to stronger heat outpace those saved from milder cold weather.<\/p>\n Antonio Gasparrini, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said implementing effective and diverse public health measures was critical as heatwaves became more frequent.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is another extreme heatwave hitting Europe this summer,\u201d he said. \u201cAs in previous events in the past months, we can expect not just a substantial death toll but also strong geographical differentials in excess mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, the World Meteorological Organization said wildfires and poor air quality were compounding the negative health effects of extreme heat. It noted that temperatures during the first week of August reached more than 42C in parts of west Asia, southern central Asia, most of north Africa, southern Pakistan, and the south-west US, with local areas exceeding 45C.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what climate change looks like,\u201d Ward said. \u201cAnd it will only get worse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Extreme heat is breaking temperature records across Europe, early measurements suggest, and driving bigger and stronger wildfires. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-78980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Firefighters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/3671.jpg\")
Firefighters tackle wildfires across southern Europe \u2013 video<\/p>\n