Climate change is burning Europe, record heatwaves are killing hundreds

Climate scientists at World Weather Attribution have confirmed that continued emissions from fossil fuels are directly responsible for the violent disturbances and record heatwaves currently sweeping the European continent. Experts stressed that the extreme heat that is currently burning Europe would have been almost impossible just a few decades ago, warning that climate change is effectively spiraling out of control, imposing a complex health and economic reality on all countries on the continent.

Breathtaking thermal dome

The French meteorological department announced that the country recently recorded the hottest day since the start of historical records, causing widespread chaos in schools, hospitals, transport sectors and open-air contracting.

French medical authorities confirmed a sharp rise in drowning deaths as citizens rushed to beaches and ponds to escape the heat, while the French Ministry of Health and European mortality monitoring institutions revealed that more than 1,500 deaths related to acute heat stress and heatstroke have been recorded over the past few days, most of which were concentrated among the elderly and those with chronic diseases.

On the other side of the Channel, the Met Office in the United Kingdom announced that the country is preparing for record temperatures that could reach 38 degrees Celsius, after already recording the hottest day in June on  record at 36.1 degrees Celsius.

The scientists explained that this extraordinary wave is fueled by a pattern of suspended high atmospheric pressure that traps hot air over Europe and attracts extremely warm tropical air coming directly from the Sahara Desert.

Exceptional flames in Spain and Italy

A recent study published in the scientific journal Nature revealed that large areas of southern Spain and Italy, as well as Greece and Turkey, are beginning to experience up to 40 more days of extreme heat stress compared to the 1970s.

Spanish authorities announced that temperatures exceeded the 42 degrees Celsius mark in some southern provinces, resulting in hundreds of additional deaths due to heat exhaustion, and medical sources in the Iberian Peninsula and Italy estimated the death toll of the current heat wave at hundreds due to severe symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, breathing, nausea and fatal heat exhaustion.

Meanwhile, meteorologists have warned that a peak heat of as high as 41 degrees Celsius is set to hit parts of Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic over the weekend, and experts have stressed that these typically colder climate countries are far less prepared to face these violent weather waves than Mediterranean countries, raising serious fears of a jump in the death toll there.

'Tropical nights' deprive Europeans of sleep

Scientific analysis by the climate organization WWA has shown  that high nighttime temperatures are about 100 times more frequent today than they were just 23 years ago, during the famous historic European heatwave of 2003.

The researchers confirmed the spread of what is known as "tropical nights" on the continent, where the temperature does not drop below 20 degrees Celsius over a 24-hour period, depriving the human body of the cold needed to regulate its internal temperature and recover from the heat of the day, which is directly linked to an increase in sudden death rates.

Imperial College London announced that 45 percent of the 854 cities analyzed in 30 European countries broke the historic record for the "Wet Onion Ball Temperature" (WBGT), the index used to measure the human body's ability to cool itself through sweat secretion, which means that heat stress reaches dangerous levels that are not normal human adaptability.

This severe climate degradation comes to the fore again in the light of the direct responsibility of human activity, as the United Nations asserts that fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) account for about 68% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of total carbon dioxide emissions.

While Professor Frederik Otto denied that the El Niño phenomenon had any role in the current record temperatures for June  , the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Climate Change, Simon Steele, stated that the solutions are quite clear and require accelerating the transition to clean energy and forest protection, stressing that the science is settled and the current speed of breaking climate records is shocking and no country can afford the continuation of the current situation.