Extreme heat is breaking temperature records across Europe and driving huge wildfires in what scientists have described as a ‘molotov cocktail’ of climatic conditions.
In south-west France, records were broken in Angoulême, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Saint-Émilion and Saint-Girons.
The country’s climate bureau said the ‘often remarkable, even unprecedented, maximum temperatures’ in the region were 12C above the norm for the last few decades.
In the south-west of France, 40 per cent of a sample of weather stations recorded temperatures above 40C on Monday.
In Paris parts of the River Seine have been opened for swimmers with thousands taking to the waters to beat the heat, the first time public bathing has been allowed for more than a century.
Lauriane Batté, a climate scientist at Météo France, said it was too soon to say if records were being ‘shattered’ rather than simply broken, but said the geographic extent of the heat was significant.
‘Unfortunately, it’s to be expected,’ she said, adding that more than half of the 51 heatwaves in France since 1947 had occurred in the last 15 years. ‘Clearly, it’s a sign that the climate is warming.’
Extreme Heat, Drought & Fire
In Italy 16 major cities were placed under red heat alerts and a four-year-old boy died of heatstroke, and in Spain a man died in a wildfire after suffering burns on 98 per cent of his body.
In Croatia, air temperature records were set in Šibenik, at 39.5C, and Dubrovnik, at 38.9C, while large forest fires raged along its coast.
Firefighters battled multiple wildfires across Greece, including blazes threatening villages and towns near the western city of Patras and on two tourist islands.
Fires have burned houses, farms and factories and prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists since Tuesday.
Beyond Europe, dozens of temperature records were broken across Canada, and record-breaking heat above 50C in Iraq was blamed for a nationwide blackout.
Bob Ward, a policy director at the Grantham Research Institute which is based at the UK’s London School of Economics and studies climate change, said: ‘This summer, like every summer now, has been exceptional in terms of extreme heat around the world.
‘This is what climate change looks like. And it will only get worse.’
The hot weather across Europe has dried out vegetation and allowed wildfires to spread further.
EU scientists projected ‘extreme to very extreme conditions’ across the entire continent, with ‘particularly severe’ risks in much of southern Europe.
Wildfires in Europe have burned more than 400,000 hectares so far this year, 87 per cent more than the average for this time of year over the last two decades.
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.
