Although July has only just begun, Europe has already gone through two intense heat episodes that have set records and are being seen as a clear signal of the new climate being shaped by climate change.
After the high temperatures of May, June brought even more scorching conditions, breaking records in many European countries. The World Meteorological Organization described this as an extraordinary event, while another heatwave is expected to sweep across the continent.
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Europe is warming faster than many other parts of the globe, exposing it ever more frequently to repeated and intense waves of extreme heat.
The June heatwave became particularly severe because of the combination of very high temperatures and high humidity, a factor that makes it harder for the body to cool itself naturally through sweating. The heat also remained high at night, giving the body no chance to recover. In Cardiff, the warmest June night in the history of the United Kingdom was recorded, while most of England and Wales experienced at least one “tropical night,” when temperatures do not fall below 20 degrees Celsius, a phenomenon that was previously very rare in Britain. According to scientists, tropical nights and extreme heatwaves will appear more and more often as global temperatures continue to rise.
Met Office experts stress that climate change caused by human activity has made these episodes more likely and more intense. The same atmospheric system that brought extreme heat to the United Kingdom also struck much of Europe. Germany described this episode as “a heatwave that will go down in history,” while France called it “historic” and “extraordinary.” More than 12 countries in Western, Central and Eastern Europe broke their June temperature records, in some cases by margins of 2-3°C compared with previous records.
In some countries, temperatures rose above 40°C, setting new records for any time of year, even though June is usually cooler than July. Meteorologists estimate that, although these values remain unusual in relation to historical data, they are no longer unexpected under conditions of global warming. The rise in global temperatures over the past century is mainly linked to greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.
